


Do Us Part

by teicakes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Demon AU, Domestic Fluff, Ghost Hunter AU, M/M, Magic, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, and a touch of some angst, awkward first meetings, demon keith, demon lore, like really awkward, lowkey cameos from zarkon and co, overenthusiastic love of chicken nuggets, sight sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13128786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teicakes/pseuds/teicakes
Summary: Shiro's always been able to... see a little bit more than others. It's how he's ended up on a team of ghost hunters. But things suddenly shoot far out of his depth when he stumbles into a house containing much more than your average ghost.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noir-wing](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=noir-wing).



> I'll be updating this every day or two with a new chapter over the holiday break, so come check in every once in a while to see what's new (:

“Okay Shiro, I need you to crawl this way slowly, like… slug levels slow, really close to the ground. We need to get a detailed shot of the ground and walls from a kid’s point of view.”

Shiro adjusted the knobs on his camera stabilizer and stared back at the ghoulish figure of Lance’s face hovering over a flashlight, chin and ears glowing an eerie jack-o-lantern orange. On second thought… he went back to focusing on camera settings. “Got it. You want a child’s perspective for the set-up shot. Do you want me to open the door as well?”

“Nah, I’ll leave it ajar for you so that your hand opening it doesn’t ruin the mood. Just walk in and join us in the other room, get a nice establishing shot.”

“Okay, but this is the last time I’m filming the entrance, there’s a lot more of this place we have to explore.”

Lance shot two finger guns at him and backed off towards the next door down the hall. “That’s our man Shiro, always keeping us on track. Hunk and I’ll be waiting in the next room.”

“For cripes sake please don’t…” Shiro started, but it was already too late. Lance had already disappeared into the room, GoPro held high, flashlight off. Seconds later a terrified shriek filled the abandoned house, a loud thud punctuating the cry followed by the sounds of Lance swearing and Hunk yelling an octave and a half past his normal voice.

“ _ LANCE YOU KNOW MY BODY DOES ITS OWN THING WHEN FREAKED OUT! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A DEMON FOR ALL I KNEW!” _

“Still, you think  _ punching _ is going to fend them off?”

Shiro rolled his eyes as Hunk and Lance spiraled into yet another debate about punching ghosts and went back to the task at hand, dropping to a crouch and creeping slowly into the room they’d just been in. He’d been around them far too long to not know it was best to leave them to their own devices when they got like this.

The three of them had been a trio of ghost hunters for over a year now. Lance and Hunk had long been exploring abandoned sites and trying to contact spirits, probably since before Shiro even knew them. Hunk was a firm believer and absolutely terrified of even the most docile of apparitions. Last month he’d nearly crushed Shiro and their audio equipment when a flashlight had turned off at Lance’s request. Lance on the other hand fell more into the open-minded cynic category, fairly certain there were explanations for everything paranormal in the world but the first of any of them to jump at the idea that they might have actually gathered real proof. That still didn’t keep him from pulling the occasional prank every so often. They’d needed to confiscate his Ouija board after the infamous ‘K-I-L-L-H-U-N-K’ incident that nearly had their partner hanging up his flashlight for good. 

And that left himself, Shiro, crawling through the dust bunnies and cobwebs of an abandoned parlour, ghost detectors and camera lenses slung around his shoulders. Despite Lance’s insistence he prefered to stay behind the lens, the observer to all of his partners’ attempts at communication and summoning. He readjusted his grip and took another pass of the room, illuminating the peeling wallpaper and water-marred furniture a sickly yellow under the light of his naked bulb. Another of Lance’s great ideas. Always one for atmosphere that guy. Even if he never saw a shred of proof he was going to record everything to A-list horror standards. Shiro held still on an intricately carved cabinet filled with blacked china and worn figurines, their faces faded away in the sands of time. He was about to call it a day when something else caught his eye. 

There, in the corner of the room, behind a peeling games table and naked coat rack, was a light. Barely more than a few inches above the ground, it glowed a pale lilac, tendrils of light curling from its center like wisps of other-earthy smoke. One look at the camera’s monitor showed the device registered none of it. See, there was another reason why Shiro refused to fill an active role in the hunt for the paranormal, one floating three feet in front of him that no one else would ever see.

Ever since he’d started working with Hunk and Lance, he’d been…  _ seeing things. _ Shadows hovering over his friends’ shoulders, whispers in his ear as Hunk asked questions in a tremoring voice. None of it was ever recorded. He could review footage a thousand times, point out moving rocks and knick knacks to Lance and Hunk everytime they so much as trembled, but there was never any proof. He’d long since given up on mentioning it. All it did was serve to set Hunk even more on edge than usual and goad Lance to tease them both about their overactive imaginations. 

Not that this was imaginary. Shiro snapped off his light, left alone in nothing more than the soft glow of the wisp that occupied the room with him. He reached into his pocket. 

“H-hey there,” he stammered. “I’m not here to hurt you, I’m not going to try and send you away or anything, I just want to talk.” He was never any good at starting conversations with spirits. He always assumed it was best to talk to them like a lost pet or child, safe and comforting. “I’ve turned the camera off, and have this Spirit Box here… uh, it’s to help pick up your voice if you want to speak to me, not that I’m forcing you to or anything, but if you did want to that’d be great.”

The orb continued to float there, real as ever. 

“I’m… can you maybe do something with your light if you want to speak to me? Not disappear… but…”

As if in response the orb’s glow flared a bright white for a second. 

“Ah, cool. That’s nice of you, thanks. Give me a second.” He yanked the antenna out to full height and set the box on his knee, the familiar crackles of static sparking to life. “I’ll try not to get too personal too soon in case you don’t like that. So, uh, how long have you been here for?”

He sat in silence, ears tuned to the noise of the scanner for the slightest change in sound. After a few moments a word crackled from the box

“ _...thirty… -ears…” _

“Oh, woah,” Shiro breathed. Usually it took far longer for something even resembling a response to appear. “Uhm, okay, so I guess you were living here back then. Is there something in this room that’s yours?”

“ _...kxzxcvc… no…” _

“Nothing? Well I guess that goes my next question.” He racked his brains for another. “Okay, how about this? How did you find this place?”

“ _...party… invited… _ ”

That was much more than he was used to, this spirit was chatty. “Can I ask what your name is?”

“ _ Ktzxhvxc… zkrmras… sdwdkr…”  _ Nothing but unintelligible static. Looked like the spirit wasn’t quite as open as he’d thought.

“Ah, got it. So, uh, that party, were there lots of people?”

“ _ nbsdfm… dozens…” _

Back on track. Shiro smiled. “Wow, that must have been fun. Was that why you decided to stay here longer?”

The box let out a particularly aggressive shot of static and Shiro had to momentarily crank down the volume. He barely caught the last word out of it.

“... _ dismissed”  _ Not a regular word he ever expected to hear. Shiro licked his lips and looked around the room, but all there was was him and the orb. 

“S-sorry, I didn’t get that, could you say it again? A little quieter?”

_ “...never dismissed… all gone... “ _

Something told Shiro he should stop, leave it there, thank the spirit and walk out of the room before more was said, but his curiosity got hold of his tongue before he could help it.

“D-dismissed? As in… like as in someone order you to stay here, like a boss or something?”

The box crackled louder than ever, the orb shrinking to a minute white ball. “ _ Snsxno-sdsdWE AREnnyxx… OT SERVANTS…” _ A weight plumetted deep in Shiro’s stomach, rooting him to the ground. The spirit he’d been talking to seemed to be trying to hide itself as close to the games table as possible. Despite its miniscule size now, and the scant light it emitted, he could still see the shadows of the room clearly, dark blotches from the chandelier above spread over his leg and the floorboards like deep wine stains. Shadows that had no right to be on him, not if this spirit was the only source of light.

“I… we’re not alone… are we?”

Laughter, cruel and mirthless rang from the box in his lap as Shiro turned around. 

Not one, but three wisps floated behind him, colours pulsing between deep indigo and blood red. They were far larger than the first, larger than a basketball at least, their stray trails of spirit whisking around themselves like a tempest. He watched, frozen in fear as one pulsed with light as the spirit box crackled to life once more.

“ _ FOOLISH HUMAN… WE OBEY NONE OF YOUR KIND…”  _ The other two seemed to respond in kind, stormclouds floating closer, forming a front. Shiro was in trouble… he was so completely out of his depth, plummeting down a trench and still falling even now. Never has he seen anything like this, nothing with auras this strong or voices this clear. 

“I… I’m sorry!” He fought to keep his voice even, but the quaking in his knees made it’s way to his throat. “I… I had no idea… I…” something the spirit had said clicked into place, just as ice flooded his veins. 

“You’re not human… you’re… not even from this world. You’re…”

_ “The child finally realizes… _ ” Another voice this time, higher pitched, crackled to life. The spi- no… demon on the left.  _ “Do you believe he has the capability-”  _

_ “His limbs quiver at the mere sight of us, his aura shows nothing beyond increased perception…” _

_ “In other words,”  _ came the voice of the third, cold and clear,  _ “he is of no use. He can only hinder our escape.” _

Escape… that would mean… Shiro glanced around the room, looking for signs, anything… and with a jolt realized the smallest spirit had disappeared completely. The reports on this location had always said that this room had been the most active of them all, furniture was found to be moved and electronics lost all charge without a moment's notice. The other rooms… Shiro racked his brain. The rest of the estate had only reported sightings, specters floating, the occasional creaking floorboard or pacing footsteps, nothing more. It was theorized that the spiritual energy all spurred from this spot. Which meant…

Which meant if he could escape this room, he’d be safe. They couldn’t follow him. He fought to control his legs, to calm his breathing.

“S-so you’re trapped here? Do you want to go back home?” Feigning ignorance was the one way to catch them off guard. He only had one chance at the door. He gripped the spirit box tighter. “I… I can’t do anything like that, but I could find someone who could for you…”

“ _ FOOL. Your mind cannot comprehend what it is we truly desire.” _

“I’m just trying to understand,” Shiro spoke slowly, using the wall to pull himself to full height. “I… I’ve never met anything this willing to talk before. I...” he reached a hand out to them, fingers fighting his racing pulse to keep from shaking, “... I want to understand. I want to know if I can help you.”

The light of the three demons dim, as if in contemplation of his words. 

Shiro took his chance. 

With a kick off the wall he launched himself across the room, stumbling, barely staying upright as he ran with single-minded focus towards the open doorway. Six steps. Six steps to freedom and he could never set foot in this place again. A cloud of dust rose under his foot. Five. Five more, the spirits hadn’t even reacted yet, he was going to make it… he was…

The door slammed closed as his fingers collided with the hard oak frame, a shriek from the spirit box drowning out the scream in his own throat. 

_ “HE FLEES, HE FLEES MY LORD! HE MEANS TO EXPOSE US! WE MUST DISPOSE OF HIM!” _

He could hear footsteps on the other side of the door, frantic voices calling out for him. He beat and clawed at it, desperately trying to budge the immovable obstacle. 

“I’M IN HERE! HELP! HELP!”

Something smashed above his ear, raining shards throughout his hair and slicing his cheek. Against his better judgement he looked back. 

Furniture that had stood still was now lifted off the ground, spinning around the three demon balls. Chairs and ashtrays, plates and glasses, figurines and end tables. A footstool launched itself from orbit and careened towards him. Shiro collapsed into a ball as splinters rained down on him from where his skull had just been a moment ago. 

“ _SHIRO!_ _Shiro man!_ What’s going on?! We can’t open the door, stop Shiro this isn’t funny! _”_ Hunk’s voice, high and horrorstruck came from the other side of the door even as the handle shook under his friend’s mammoth grip. 

“DEMONS!” he screamed as another chair was flung his way and he had to dodge yet again. “There are demons here! Haunting the place!”

“What? No way! That’s amazing! Are you recordi-”

“LANCE NOT NOW!” Hunk yelled. “We have to get him out of there!”

“Right… god, okay…” A crystal wineglass smashed itself beside Shiro’s shoulder. “Hunk, grab your screwdriver, maybe we can loosen the lock enough to get him out!”

“Hurry!” he screamed, voice hoarse with panic as the games table was launched across the room and broke to pieces on top of him. Debris rained down on him, dice and cards and black and white tiles from the the glass chessboard that had sat atop it. Some pieces shone like miniature suns while others fell as listless black holes. Something hard slapped against his face and fell the the ground at his feet. 

A paddle all too familiar to Shiro. 

A Ouija board planchette. 

This one was different though, carved out of dark wood, every square centimeter of it covered in minute runes. It almost seemed to glow from the underside, a pale bluish light emitting from beneath it’s tip. One glance at the now debris covered carpet revealed the board itself, decorated in similar. Something told him these demons hadn’t come to be here on accident, even if their summoners had never intended them to stay for this long. 

“Shiro! We can’t get it open! The screws are rusted in place, we can’t even-” Another plate smashed beside him just as the entire china cabinet wrenched itself from the ground. “-get out more than one! It’s not going anywhere, Shiro! Shiro what’s going on now?!”

“I… “ he croaked as the hulking cabinet made one drunken orbit around the central demon. “I… I don’t know if I’m going to make it… I…” 

The cabinet made another swing around the demon, now a deep pulsing red, picking up speed. He could hear Lance and Hunk shouting from the other side of the door but his ears couldn’t pick out a single word. He was going to die, right here, right now, and there was nothing he could do. 

“P-please,” he whimpered, hands clutching onto the debris of marbles and chess pieces littered beneath him, starling as something warm found it’s way into his fingers and rubbed against the cuts marring his hands. “Please, I’ll do anything… don’t… don’t let me die…”

It was picking up speed, careening dangerously around the room, taking out other smaller objects spinning around the other two demons in its wake. Laughter rang from the spirit box that lay abandoned at his heels as Shiro closed his eyes from the sight. 

“Please… God, anyone… I’ll do anything, anything at all, I swear… just… just save me from this.”

Something wrenched him be the collar, slamming him against the door and flinging his eyes open just as the cabinet launched at him. We watched, petrified as it sailed towards him, oblivious to the bright flash searing his finger as the force at his collar spread over his entire body, pressing him against the door as if he’d been flung there in an accelerating ship. He could hear wood groan, hear his own voice screaming from what felt like miles away as the shelving unit took up his full range of vision. 

He was going to die. 

And then he was falling, falling backwards, still pressed into the door, cabinet still sailing towards his face, and then it stopped, but he was still falling. There was a sickening crunch as it caught the edges of the doorframe and the contents still inside smashed against the glass windows. Shiro saw the ceiling, watched Hunk and Lance’s shocked faces tilt into view and slammed against the floor, wind knocking itself from his lungs. 

Hunk was kneeling beside him in an instant, peppering him with more questions than he could process. 

“Shiro are you okay? What’s five plus seven? What’s Lance’s middle name, what nickname do you and him have for me,  _ how does a wifi router work, HOW DO YOU SET UP A WIRELESS PRINTER? _ ”

“Hunk…” Shiro croaked, “why are you asking that right now? I… I set it up last week it’s fine I just had to have it synch up with the router using that button thingy and then spend another half hour googling how to do the rest… but why?”

The other man let out a sigh of relief. “Not possessed… thank god.” At Shiro’s quizzical look he explained further. “Considering spirits are old and all and don’t react well to new tech, I figure they don’t know the first thing about it. So like… asking someone how it works is probably the best test to see if they’re still them.”

“EAT HOLY WATER DEMONS!” shrieked Lance from above them, wielding a super soaker twice the size of his thigh into the room beyond like a soldier charging into battle. He pumped a good half dozen blasts over the wreckage of the dresser. Shiro looked at the empty shoulder holster on Hunk. 

“I told you it’d come in handy at some point.”

Shiro wasn’t about to argue right about now.

“Let’s… let’s get out of here,  _ now. _ I don’t think they can leave that room, but that doesn’t mean I want to test that theory.”

“Got it,” Hunk nodded. “Can you stand?”

“... Not that well.”

“I got you then,” said Hunk, and pulled Shiro onto his back, camera equipment and all. “Come on Lance, let’s go, now!”

Shiro sunk into Hunk’s form, warm and real and reassuring after what had just befallen him. He looped his arms around his friend’s neck as they made their way back to the car, eyes closing in exhaustion. Whether from relief or something else, he could almost swear he felt a set of arms wrapping around him, holding him close, their hands settling atop his own


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro though he'd managed to escape with just a few bumps and scrapes. It looks like he may have walked away with a bit more than that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas Day from here, and Happy 25th of December to everyone else C:

The events of the past hour had felt more like a trance than reality to Shiro. Hunk and Lance had raced him to their car, barely tossing him into the backseat and fastening their seatbelts before they were careening down the highway, away from the haunted estate. Hunk had spent the whole time beside him, shining lights in eyes, feeling his pulse, and all other manner of first aid he could think of that might indicate a lasting effect of his encounter. He simply sat there, gazing out the windshield at nothing as Hunk continued to check him over, responding only when prompted. He’d been inches away from dying. It wasn’t something he was going to shake off fast.   
  
Neither Hunk or Lance broached the subject of proving what had happened. Ever since the door had mysteriously fallen from its hinges Lance hadn’t so much as mentioned a single aspect of recording. They’d both seen the cabinet slam into the doorway with more force than a human could ever manage. People online would certainly question it, but to them, there was no doubt what Shiro had encountered was considered ‘normal’. It was a small relief that he knew they would trust him.   
  
Lance had pulled into the motel parking lot fast and the furious, nearly flipping the van as he skidded into a vacant spot and dashing round the vehicle to help Hunk guide him out. They brought him inside their room wrapping him in blankets even as Hunk began to pour salt around the thresholds and lit a bundle of sage. Lance doused a hanky in some holy water from the gun and began to wiped some of the dirt and grime from Shiro’s face, picking splinters and pieces of glass from his hair and clothes. Hunk joined them a moment later with a bowl of soup from the crockpot sitting on the counter and gently encouraged him to eat. While he spooned hot broth and chunks of vegetables into his mouth they continued to check him over. Each mouthful warmed him inside, bringing him closer and closer to normalcy.   
  
By the time the bowl was scraped clean Hunk and Lance had seemed to calm, even if by just a fraction. Other than the throbbing in his back and few shallow cuts on his face and hands he had escaped amazingly unscathed.   
  
“Hey Shiro…” Hunk spoke for the first time in what felt like hours, “d’you, like, maybe want to clean yourself up a little bit while Lance and I get the place ready for bed?”  
  
They were giving him a chance at reclaiming control. He knew what they really wanted to do was review the footage and audio from tonight and try to piece together what had happened. In another place he’d be ready to talk to them, tell them first hand, but that wasn’t here. It was going to be ages before he could make himself relive this willingly.   
  
“Yeah, that might be nice.”  
  
“I’ll get you a clean pair of clothes too.”  
  
“Thanks Hunk,” he smiled tiredly.  
  
Within moments of stepping in the shower he knew it had been the right choice. The hot water ran down his tense muscles, cleaning any remaining evidence of the demon’s rampage. The last of the debris fell from his hair as he lathered in shampoo and the final traces of dusts were scrubbed from his skin.   
  
Working up the courage, he checked over the damage himself. Washing his face revealed some shallow cuts on his right cheek, eyebrow, and across the bridge of his nose. His hands had fared a bit worse. They were littered in blossoming bruises from where he’d pounded the door and cuts from the shrapnel he’d clutched at. Spiderwebs of little white gashes wound about the undersides of his fingers, and in the case of one of his ring fingers, even looped all the way around. With a bit of twisting he checked his backside. There was definitely a bruise forming on his left buttock, he’d probably have to sleep on his side for the next few days as it healed up.  
  
Shiro closed his eyes and leaned against the warming tile, letting his mind go to that blissed out place he entered every time his body was wrapped in hot water. He’d talk to Lance and Hunk about it tomorrow, or maybe in the night if he had trouble sleeping. He might even ask to share a bed with one of them, probably Hunk, and let their reassuring bulk help stave off nightmares. They could figure out what to do about the future of their little trio afterwards. He’d hate to stop working with them altogether, it had been ages since he’d had coworkers that were essentially best friends, but his role might have to change after this. In the least, they needed to research the sites they visited a hell of a lot better than they had this time.   
  
The water pressure lessened slightly and Shiro groaned. These motels always had a limit on how long you could take a good shower for and it was always five minutes less than what he needed. He took a few moments to debate whether he rode it out a bit more or finish the rest of his routine, but with the threat of the stream suddenly becoming an icy torrent he figured he may as well condition while he still could. He tried to grope for the bottle on the lip of the tub but only succeeded at toppling the legion of bath products Lance insisted on packing onto the floor. With a sigh Shiro bent over and tried to sort his own bottle from the eight others.   
  
He was promptly stopped by the sight of another two feet standing in front of him.   
  
Feet attached to someone leaning over, holding out the conditioner in question with an unreadable look on their face. A face that, by all definitions of the word normal, was anything but that, with bright lilac eyes and sweeping indigo horns pulling back to crimson tips atop their head.   
  
Shiro did the only rational thing: scream. His chihuahua pitched yelp was coupled with a loss of footing that lead into a spectacular fall into the tiled wall, sliding his bruised backside down every last square with a dissonant squeaking harmony, until he lay on the shower floor amongst the fallen bottles.   
  
The demon shot a finger to its lips in panic with a startled look to the door. Shiro could only sit in shock as the demon disappeared into a faint wisp of smoke and the scars on his hand glow purple for a second. As if on queue Lance burst over the threshold, a single sneaker raised over his head in defense as the last trace of the demon vanished.   
  
“SHIRO! You okay? What happened?”  
  
At the sight of his friend and partner slumped over in the tub, scattered bath products barely covering his privates he stalled. Shiro took the opportunity to quickly tug the nearest bottle of something fully on top of his junk.  
  
“Did… did you slip?”  
  
“Y-yeah…”  
  
Somewhat relieved that no demons or levitating furniture was in the room that he could see, Lance scratched his head with the tip of his shoe. “So, uh, anything else happen?” Shiro was painfully aware of Lance’s fixation on his crotch and realize with a pang that the bottle covering his shame happened to be Lance’s favourite (and very expensive) moisturizing bath gel. “Everything good?”  
  
“Uh… yeah. All good. Just slipped.” He was kicking himself for not mentioning the sudden apparition in the shower with him, but he was so completely and utterly desperate to bury this awkward moment 6 feet under for good he’d gone and said the only thing he could think of. It… it could have just been his imagination. He was tired and it was certainly hot enough in here for him to be getting woozy with heat, not to mention the events of tonight…  
  
Words he kept trying to convince himself of.   
  
Lance gave him one more look over before backing up into the other room and closing the door with him. “Okay man, but if there’s anything else just holler. Like, anything. Even if you just want a burrito to eat in there.”  
  
Shiro gave him probably the 6th most confused look he’d ever given Lance in his life and watched as the door clicked closed. As soon as Lance was gone he whipped the bottle of moisturizer back onto the tub side and held his finger up to his eyes.   
  
He’d sworn he’d seen the marks on it glow and now, with the full heat of the shower turning his skin a bright pink he could clearly see the white cuts etched here and there. The ones on his ring finger were different. Unlike the others, where he could run his finger over them and feel the flaps of skin move, these ones were already healed, scarred over to a smooth milky white. The more he stared the less random they seemed, almost as if they formed some pattern, circling the whole way around his finger. How they’d glown though…  
  
Shiro nearly hit his head on the overhanging faucet as his hand did just that, the markings around his finger lighting a brilliant bright purple into an ornate ring. The light faded almost as abruptly as it started, dimming in time with the settling of a shadow at the other side of the tub. His stomach flip flopped.   
  
The demon was back, and there was no question about it, its presence was linked to the marks on his finger. It sat crouched, almost in mirror to himself, blinking at him curiously with eyes just a touch too vibrant. On second look Shiro saw its body was mottled in colour, limbs a darker shade whereas its face and chest melded to a creamy gold. Mid-length hair fell down its neck and slicked to its skin under the force of the water now falling on it.   
  
Right now he was really wishing he’d brought Hunk’s supersoaker of holy water in here with him. It was eying him, like a wild animal coming across a human for the first time, face a mix of curiosity, confusion, and caution.  
  
“You didn’t tell him.”  
  
Shiro sucked in a breath. It’d spoke! The thing was speaking!  
  
Seemingly unsatisfied with his silence, it continued. “Why didn’t you tell your friend about me? You could have, but you didn’t. Why?”  
  
Shiro’s mouth seemed to be working but no words were coming out. His jaw was just flapping open and shut in pure shock. Ever since he’d started seeing things they’d never been, well, this real. It was either dark shadows or will-o-wisps of varying colours, or on the very rare occasion, blurry figures with only the barest traces of features. He could count the eyelashes on this one if he dared.   
  
“Y-you’re real…” he managed.  
  
The demon gave him the universal look for ‘no shit, Sherlock’.   
  
“Yes. Like you. But why didn’t you tell him?”  
  
This line of questioning was completely out of left field. Weren’t demons supposed to try and corrupt him? Or ask him for his deepest wishes only to twist them in the cruelest of ways? Nowhere in any text Shiro had read did it say demons asked questions in the same realm as those asked by 6 year olds when they appeared beside you in the shower, or moreso, tried to read the labels of shampoo bottles as you sat there trying to figure out if you’d actually hit your head and were knocked out right now.   
  
“I-I guess I didn’t think to fast enough.” It was half true, but the demon seemed unsatisfied still.   
  
“But did you want to? Are you scared?”   
  
“Uh… yeah, I definitely am, but then again this could just be a concussion dream and I’m bleeding out on the shower floor right now.”  
  
“You’re not!” Shiro shrunk into the wall as the demon bounced forward, but noticed its eyebrows arched in concern. “Your heartbeat is faster now, and you have some injuries on your face, but nothing fatal! The worst is the bruised hip and rib on your left side, but otherwise you’re healthy.”  
  
“H-how…?” How could the demon know everything… unless…  
  
“The seal,” the demon nodded at Shiro’s finger. “When the contract was made I was bound to your flesh.”  
  
“C-contract? Seal?” Shiro’s head was spinning, completely unrelated to heat or injury. This was 50 meters over his head and growing with every word the demon said. He shook his head, swiping the air in front of him to push it back. “Just… just stop. And start from the beginning. Why are you here and what’s this contract you’re talking about?”  
  
It blinked at him with it’s too-bright eyes and seemed to digest what he said. “So you really are a novice in the arts then?” At Shiro’s lack of recognition it settled itself back against the other wall and sighed.   
  
“I was summoned years ago into that parlour with the other demons you met there. Some kind of ‘seance party’ or whatever the humans referred to it as. I was the first and weakest of those they invited, and of course, spurred on by their success with me they proceeded to summon beings far outside their ability to control. They rampaged, similar to how they did with you tonight, and we became trapped in that room.”  
  
“The Ouija board…” Shiro breathed, “I thought it looked strange. So it was modified to contact demons…”  
  
“More to summon, but yes, close enough.”  
  
The picture was rapidly forming in his head. “So… so you were all trapped there, and if those other demons killed anyone, their spirits are likely still in the manor as well, which are the other haunting sightings… so that means… that means you were still there today and why we went to check out the place. But then…” he squinted at the demon, “how come you’re no longer trapped there?”  
  
“The contract.”  
  
“Right. The contract.” Shiro drummed his finger against a knee for a second. “Okay, what’s this contract, I didn’t…”  
  
“Your pleading.”  
  
“My…?” Shiro started. It all came rushing back. The blackness, the static crackling in the air, the objects hurtling at him from all sides as he lay crumpled up against the door.  
  
“ ‘Please God or anyone, I’ll do anything, anything at all, I swear. Just save me from this.’ “ The words he’d said in desperation were echoed on the demon’s tongue. “You weren’t addressing me in particular, but I took my chance. You were bleeding enough for me to take it as an offering, and holding me in your hands…”  
  
The warm ball that had made its way into his hands right before he’d been set free. He’d thought it had been his own blood on some marble or trinket… but…  
  
As if reading his mind, the demon nodded. “I used that as the chance to seal myself to you. Now instead of being tied to the room I am tied to your person.”  
  
“You’re… you’re what?” Shiro choked.   
  
“To your person. Your side. That’s what the runes mean.” He pointed at the band around Shiro’s finger, now glowing faintly. “My anchor to this realm is you now.” At the blanching of Shiro’s face he threw up his hands in concern, gesturing erratically. “That’s not saying that I can possess you now! I might have some control over your reflexes from time to time, but your mind is completely separate from me!”  
  
“I… I’m like your carpool now…” stammered Shiro.  
  
“You’re what?”  
  
“C-carpool… like, you know…” crap, Hunk was right, demons didn’t know anything about modern life.  “I’m… I’m like your chauffeur. Like I’m still the driver but you can tell me where to go and-”  
  
“I can ask you again and again until you give in but you’re not obligated to-”  
  
“Are you going to try and take over me bit by bit? Like chip away at me until it’s just you in my body?”  
  
The demon looked at him as if he’d just admitted to killing a busload of kids, or well, the way he’d expect a normal person to react to something like that. His eyes were wide, head wobbling from side to side in disbelief.   
  
“If I tried to do that my bond to this world would be broken. It’s your spirit that grounds me here.”  
  
“My… my spirit?”  
  
“W-well yes!” The demon seemed equally as flustered as himself. “If I bound myself only to your flesh and blood when you died I’d be trapped with your bones forever, no better than in that house. Tying the binding to your spirit… when it leaves this world, so I will too.”  
  
Shiro sat back dumbly against the shower wall. He couldn’t even care about the water running down his legs growing steadily colder by the minute as the last traces of hot water left the tank. “So… so you’re with me until death does us part?”  
  
The demon only managed a sheepish nod.   
  
Shiro settled back, letting the cooling tiles numb the headache forming in his temples. He was alive. He wasn’t seeing things. He’d unwittingly entered a contract with a demon, one that was going to last until his final breath. Nevermind that he at least seemed to have managed to find one that at least seemed to fall more on the humane side of demonic, he was going to be stuck with him until he could figure out how to fix all this, if he even could.   
  
“Name…” he said finally, the water now approaching frigid temperatures. He felt exhausted.   
  
“Wha?”  
  
“Name,” he repeated. “If I’m going to be living with you for the foreseeable future, I kind of need to know your name. I’m not referring to you as ‘demon’ for the next 60 years.”  
  
“Oh.” The demon’s tail gave a little wag, and Shiro was almost certain he saw it’s cheeks grow a shade darker. “It’s Azkiethuzul.”  
  
“Az-kuh-what?”  
  
“Azkiethuzul.”  
  
Shiro ran a head through his hair. He’d been through enough tonight as is.   
  
“Keith,” he said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Keith,” he said tiredly. “I’m going to call you Keith from now on. There’s no way I’m going to be able to say your real one properly.”  
  
“Oh, okay.” Keith’s tail curled up on itself, the demon tracing little trails into the rivulets of water on the tub bottom. “I’m okay with that.”  
  
Shiro nodded. If he had to get used to having a demon with him for the rest of his life he was pretty sure Keith could adapt to a nickname at the price of his relative freedom. There was a lot they were going to have to adjust to, least of all how he’d be able to break the news to Hunk and Lance. Some way that didn’t make him a sideshow attraction or the next viral ghosthunting hit.   
  
“I guess, get back in my finger. I’m getting out of the shower now.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out there's some pros to being bonded to a demon. Shiro's just beginning to figure them out

They were back.   
  
A heavy chest of drawers lay on his legs, pinning him to the ground. The three demon orbs circled around him, their lights strobing maliciously. Every few seconds one swung closer, bringing with it an article from the room. A rook. A china violinist. A smashed wine glass. Some he could dodge, others cut into his arms and sliced hair from his head. Each time he opened his mouth to scream one of them would sweep forward, pressing their burning light to his neck, searing at his flesh where he lay until he closed his trembling lips.   
  
He couldn’t even budge the dresser, let alone feel his legs. For all he knew they were crushed beyond use. He was going to die and there was no escape.   
  
There was a shooting pain in his hand, a searing burning pain far beyond the heat of the demon light, more visceral and real than anything else he’d ever felt. He tried to scream for help again but felt the hot brand of another demon press into his side and he fought to bite his tongue. Through the tears streaming from his eyes he forced himself to look.  
  
Keith, in his demonic glory, held Shiro’s hand in a perverse grip. It was a mockery of loving handholding, only reflecting it in appearance. Wicked claws, far sharper than they’d been earlier, dug into his skin, turning his knuckles bone white. The light of the seal flickered like a bright flame, sometimes blue, sometimes red. Worst of all was his face. It was twisted into an ugly grin, a mask not even halloween shops would sell. He laughed, tugging harder, and all Shiro could do was watch as the seal crept higher, spreading up his arm. Watch as the skin around it began to blister and crumble. With each tug his arm seemed to resist less and less, until with one final pull it broke clean free of his body, hugged to Keith’s body and held up to rows upon rows of sharp, waiting teeth… opening… grinning…  
  
Shiro woke with a jolt, surfacing from the dream like a drowning man. He was drenched in sweat, heart hammering away in his chest like a captive bird, the lingering memories of pain still firing through his system.   
  
He was okay. He was back in their hotel room.   
  
It was just a dream. If he looked over he could see the sleeping forms of Hunk and Lance in the other bed, the two of them a pair of tangled octopi. Neither was particularly calm sleeper, but both were practically dead to the world as soon as they conked out. So long as they were both asleep before they began to toss and turn they’d sleep through the entire night. Right now he could spy one of Lance’s legs wrapped over Hunk’s shoulder. Normal.   
  
Despite all this his heart continued to run at fight or flight levels, he could feel it beating away with just the lightest of touches to his breast. He frowned down at where he knew the mark on his hand lay, pressed against his slowly calming heart. It was as much a reassurance of it still being a part of him as the pumping in his chest told him he was alive.   
  
The seal glowed bright.   
  
Shiro flung himself against the headboard as fast as he could. On instinct he hugged a pillow to his unprotected belly, but it only served to bring the light closer to his face. Within seconds the demon had materialized at the other end of his bed.  
  
“Your heart rate… it’s so high.” Keith cocked his head, maybe in concern, but with the eerie luminescence of his eyes it looked more like a monster from the deep, considering the meal Shiro would make. His first instinct was to bolt, scream bloody murder to wake Lance and Hunk as he booked it straight through the window to their car. The demon in his dream had ripped his limb clear off with a smile on his face.  
  
 But this… this demon sat apart from him, a respectful distance, hardly able to reach him where he sat curled up. One hand was raised hesitantly, unsure of how to proceed. The longer he looked at him the less frightening his eyes became. As he own adjusted he could see how they cast a soft glow over the sheets, bathing the fabric between them in dusky violet. The silence ticked on between them. At last Keith lowered his hand.   
  
“Are you… alright?”  
  
Shiro wasn’t sure what to say. “I… I…” he started, but stopped himself. He wasn’t sure if addressing the Keith in his dreams. What if that would only make his stronger? Gain more power over him?  
  
“I had a nightmare,” he said finally.  
  
“What kind?” Keith was squinting at him now. It made Shiro’s unease mount again, the light from the demon seemed to be growing cooler, harsher.   
  
“O-of tonight… like a repeat.”  
  
Keith jerked at that. “I wonder…” he murmured, crawling closer. Shiro pressed himself harder against the flimsy wood backing, Keith was squinting even more, his eyes almost a harsh white. Suddenly something swept across them, as if the demon was blinking sideways. Shiro suppressed a shriek into his pillow, his head banging against the dated wallpaper. Keith’s eyes were pure gold now. The demon gave him a once over, then sat back on his heels.   
  
“Like I thought.  They left their mark.”  
  
“Their… mark?”  
  
“Sometimes when we interact with humans we can leave a residue on their aura. Depending on our intent at the time it can cause different things: hallucinations, mysterious pains, bad luck… I could go on but those are some of the more common ones. It looks like their anger left quite the cloud.”  
  
“There’s a demon cloud around me right now?” Of course there was, what was he thinking? Just by having Keith tied to him there was bound to be something. Still, the idea of something maliciously spun onto him…  
  
Keith swiped near his ear and held out his empty palm. “Tell me, what do you see?”  
  
“N-nothing.”  
  
“Like I thought.” The demon waved his hand and held it back up again. “What about now?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Now?”  
  
Shiro squinted. “What are you trying to do? I don’t see anything.”  
  
Keith huffed and spun his fingers again. “How about now?”  
  
“N-YES!” Suddenly there was a foggy apparition sitting in the palm of Keith’s hand. A fuzzy white flame of sorts, occasionally waggling as if exposed to some breeze. “It’s some kind of fuzzy light…”  
  
“T-that’s it?” Keith pouted at him, actually pouted. “You can’t see any other details?”  
  
“N-no…” Shiro leaned closer. He could make out a little more. The blob had the basic shape of a figure standing in Keith’s outstretched hand. Ever so often, if he stretched his imagination, he thought he could see it waving at him. “I-is it someone waving?”  
  
“Lord, you’re even half-blind on the second plane, you’re even weaker than I thought. Still, that explains how you spotted me when your friends couldn’t.” The demon waved his hand and the specter vanished. “There are multiple planes of existence in this realm. Those with power can see onto many and conceal themselves on some. Your basic human,” he jerked his thumb at the sleeping bodies, “can only see on the first. You seem to have some vision on the second too.”  
  
It was so few words, opening hundreds more questions in answering just that one, and yet so much fell into place. How everything supernatural he’d seen had never been spotted by anyone else or any camera. This ‘half-blindness’ might also explain why so much of what he did see were shadowy figures with barely-there faces. He was seeing into another plane entirely.   
  
“Wait. Do ghosts - ah, human spirits - exist on the second plane?”  
  
Keith bobbed his head, still studying Shiro with those golden eyes. “Most do, but some can hide up until the third plane. Those in the manor with us usually remained on the third.”  
  
“And this demon aura stuff?”  
  
“It’s on the fourth. Your own aura is on the sixth.”  
  
Shiro nodded slowly. None of it really made any sense but he was long past questioning everything that was happening to him lately. “I guess everything alive has one. So that means you do as well?”  
  
“On the seventh.” Keith was now almost chest to pillow with him, waving hands around his head with concentration. “Some demons can see on even higher planes, but that’s just getting excessive. If anyone ever tells you the twelfth plane has any extra information they’re just blowing smoke out of their ass.”  
  
Despite himself, Shiro laughed. Keith looked at him in confusion.  
  
“Did I say something strange?”  
  
“N-nothing,” he chuckled, “it’s just… I never thought a demon would say something like that. It’s just… so normal.” He relaxed a little bit, unfurling from himself a touch. Keith gave him another look and continued to wave his hands about. Shiro watched him. It didn’t look like he was casting a spell, not from what he imagined. The closest he could think of was someone tugging at cotton batting.   
  
The demon seemed to notice Shiro’s studying of him. He stopped, fist half-bunched in the air, and blinked. Unsure, almost timid.  
  
“D-do you want to see it?”  
  
Shiro stared at him, dumbly. “See what?”  
  
“T-the residue. I don’t think I can spread your astral sight far enough to reach the sixth, but I might be able to manage the fourth.”  
  
“I-I… if you can?” He hadn’t expected an offer like that. But how exactly would it work?  
  
“O-okay…” Keith seemed to be second guessing this, the tip of a dark tongue darted out nervously to lick his lips. “I haven’t done this for centuries… so just… give me a few seconds. Hold still.”  
  
The demon leaned over, hands gently planting themselves against the headboard on either side of Shiro’s head. His face was right up against Shiro’s. He could even feel the warm puffs of breath coming from the demon, see the individual hairs falling into his face and around his horns. It was immensely, intimately close. He’d only been in this position with a fraction of people, and never pressed up against a wall in it before. It was too much. He could see individual flecks of colour in Keith’s eyes like this, little globes of pure gold and silver within their glow. Somewhere in the back of his mind he noted Keith’s pupils were almost normal. There was a slight oval taper to them, but otherwise he could have been looking back at the most incredible eyes on a person he’d ever seen. He was. Overwhelmed, Shiro closed his own.  
  
His shoulders gave an unwilling jolt as he felt Keith’s forehead come to meet his own. Warm, on the cusp of feverish, but nowhere near the searing sensation in his dreams. Something long and warm pressed against his nose. Dully he recognized it as Keith’s own, just as something soft brushed up against both of his eyelids, and the demon began to hum.   
  
It was a tune like none he’d heard. Multiple pitches came from the demon’s throat in dissonant harmony, but it wasn’t like the music he heard so often in horror films. It was open, unresolved. The chords coming from Keith could turn at any second to good or bad, but they only continued on this open, choiceless path. It was like swimming through a vast, endless ocean, seeing nothing but the sunrays dancing through the waves overhead.   
  
Before he knew it Keith had finished, pulling back with a chaste brush of the hand against his cheek. Shiro opened his eyes.   
  
Everything had changed.   
  
The room was the same old motel room, but he could see everything clearly, lit with a soft lighting despite the pitch black he knew it was. Keith’s body seemed to glow now more too. The golden cream of his face and belly radiated with similar soft light, individual patches of the dark inky purple also has their own luminescence. He could see bright, needle thin claws extending from Keith’s fingers, winding their way around spindly black cobwebs.   
  
Not cobwebs.   
  
Now he understood what Keith meant by residue. It was like smoke and string and tar all mixed into one, coiling and shifting around his own head and body, tugging back against Keith’s pulling. The demon was working carefully on a particularly nasty looking snarl above Shiro’s temple, his jaw set in concentration. It almost looked like he was combing at it. He reached up to touch the space where it sat, but his fingers touched nothing. Despite this, Keith still seemed to be able to interact with it just fine  
  
“Woah…” he breathed. “So it really is there… I’d never have known.”  
  
“Humans rarely do. Dark energy get tangled in with their own aura and they continue to live with it. It’s not until cases grow out of hand that they ever notice.”  
  
“Is mine?” Shiro started, but Keith cut him off.  
  
“I’ve seen worse. Cast worse actually. This wasn’t the main intent of the others. That’s not to say,” he grunted and tugged, “that this isn’t knotted to hell and back into your aura, but the actual amount isn’t too bad.”  
  
“Oh.”   
  
He settled back against the frame behind him and watched Keith work. It was slow going for the most part, the snarls of residue fighting against the demon to stay in place. Even if the clouds didn’t seem to be attached to something, Shiro had a sneaking suspicion that Keith could see more than he could and making steps to avoid ripping at it. He worked one knot at a time, pulling and shrinking and loosening and working until a bundle of the stuff floated free in his hand. Keith seemed to appraise them each time, looking over the substance carefully. Ever so often he’d clasp his hand around it, the blackness disappearing like smoke. For the remainder he burned them with a fire that gave off no heat, a pure white flame that slowly crept from bottom to top of the mass until it was nothing but a snowy flame that burned out into nothing.   
  
Shiro had no idea how long he watched Keith work at this, only that his eyes slowly grew more and more leaden with each bunch the demon disposed of. He was still exhausted after all, and the demon’s motions were soothing in their own way. He found his vision slowly blurring, his blinks growing longer and longer. Finally, he fell asleep, the soft light of Keith’s form the final sight he saw before his lids closed for good.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the one day break guys! I'm running out of my prewritten chapters and having to find time while visiting to finish the remaining ones. Bit of a longer one this time, hopefully worth the wait c:

  
“Yo. Shiro. Get up man, we need to figure out today.”  
  
Shiro groaned and tried to wave off the offending voice. One of his fingers caught onto something warm and wet. Both he and the mystery object sprang back from each other.   
  
“W-what the heck man? Did you just try to pick my nose in your sleep?” Lance was giving him a mock offended look from his vantage point beside the nightstand, but the hand over his face showed some actual belief Shiro might try again.  
  
“N-n-no!” For his own part Shiro was just as shocked about where his finger had managed to catch onto. He was propped up and alert on his hands, still not fully awake and in dire need of coffee.  
  
“You were right up in his face Lance, the dude does have a right to poke at you if you make yourself that open to it.” Hunk came to join them, three mugs balanced carefully in his hands that he set down onto the bedside table. The largest of their trio settled down on the bed opposite him. “You were out like a light thing morning, you didn’t even wake up when Lance tripped over the recording equipment. Did you sleep okay?”  
  
“Y-yeah, I did.” Shiro reached out for the cup flooded with cream and took a sip, noting, as he did, how he was curled up against the headboard. So last night probably wasn’t all just a dream. “Had some nightmares earlier on but got some better sleep after that.”  
  
“That’s good. You didn’t think about waking us up in the night? We’d have been more than happy to help if you’d needed us.”  
  
Somewhere Shiro realized that yes, yes that would have been the route he would have taken, if he didn’t have some new… guardian(?) demon materialized out of his hand every other time he was alone. They’d probably have ended up with all three of them in a bed, Shiro no doubt slowly getting crushed between the pair of them, but hopefully their warm bulk being enough to keep the bad dreams away. On the other hand, he could have woken up from another dream like the first in a semi-chokehold from Hunk and flung the guy off the bed in panic before he realized what was going on.   
  
He fiddled with his bonded finger, rubbing his thumb over the thin raised markings. “I was okay. It took a little while to calm down at first and deal with it, but I think in the end it was for the best. It all worked out.”  
  
Hunk gave him a look over his mug, but seemed to know better than to press him. “Glad to hear you’re recovering from what happened last night, but, uh, Lance and I have a few questions we want to ask about it. If you’re ready.”  
  
Shiro almost gagged on his coffee. “About last night?”  
  
“Yeah,” Lance said from his spot between the two beds. “I guess first things first, we believe you when you said something supernatural happened. That whole thing with the flying furniture was nuts.  Not to mention you can’t fake being scared for shit. So yeah, something definitely happened, didn’t it?”  
  
Shiro nodded. His stomach was starting to churn, but he fought to keep drinking. “I saw this floating orb in the room and tried to talk to it. Then some others showed up and that’s when things got violent.” He didn’t want to go into more details than that.  
  
“Thought so. Also-”  
  
“Also-” Hunk cut in over Lance, “-last night, when you were in the shower, we reviewed the audio recorded on the SpiritBox.”  
  
Shiro’s current mouthful of coffee dribbled back into his cup in alarm. “The… the SpiritBox? It records?”  
  
“Only the stuff the radio scanner picks up, so it has nothing that you said. But… but Shiro, there’s a lot of creepy stuff it said. And it’s not the usual kind of spirit box audio, it’s loud and clear and you definitely can tell what they’re saying and how angry they are.” Hunk’s hands were shaking around his cup right now. “Y-you didn’t say anything to piss them off on purpose, did you? B-because, whatever that thing was… it didn’t sound happy at all.”  
  
“No! I didn’t! I was just trying to talk to it like any other ghost.” Shiro stared down into his coffee and somewhere thirty feet below him where his stomach now was. “I-I didn’t know there were demons there.”  
  
“No. NO WAY. Demons?” Lance was looking at him in shock and awe, and Shiro had an even greater sinking feeling.  “Oh my god, Hunk, we have to go back for it now! Do you have any idea how crazy it’ll be if we have actual proof?”  
  
Shiro was frozen in place, silently pleading at Hunk to intervene. The gentle giant was unable to meet either of their gazes, looking sullenly into his coffee. Lance was letting out little whines of ‘c’mon’ and ‘we gotta’, but Hunk just continued to stir his spoon in circles. It was ages before he spoke.   
  
“When this all happened, you - I mean, we - left the camera behind.”  
  
Shiro was pretty sure his gut had bottomed out at the center of the earth.   
  
“Oh god…” he whimpered. A thousand dollar model, plus the stabilizer, left behind. There was no way they were leaving it that way.  
  
“It’s in that room, isn’t it?”  
  
Shiro could only nod, his throat seized.  
  
“I know you don’t want to go back, and I can’t ask you to Shiro, not after whatever happened happened. But… but we really need to try and see if we can recover it. Not just for footage. We need it.”  
  
Hunk was right. Horribly and awfully right. They had three more destinations on their tour of haunted places before they were supposed to head back home. It had taken months to set up schedules and have people agree to let them film, they couldn’t just not show up to the rest of them. At the same time, they couldn’t afford to go without a proper camera. He really had no choice in the matter.   
  
“So…” Hunk continued timidly, “Lance and I were talking this morning, and we agreed we need to go back there before we can hit the road. It’ll get us a bit off schedule but we can try to make it up on the drive.”  
  
“You don’t even have to go back into the place. You can just wait in the van while we run in and get it. Hunk’ll even give you his holy water.”  
  
Hunk let out an incredulous sputter.  
  
“Ok, ok… Hunk’ll give you a little bottle of it while we take the bulk of it. Come on dude, he’s still freaking the fuck out about it, we gotta make sure he’s got some small comforts.”  
  
“I know…” Hunk whined, “I was gonna make him a bottle, but saying it like you’re going to give him the whole soaker when we’ll be the ones headed in there…”  
  
“A bottle’ll be fine.” Shiro smiled, unsure if he was fooling either of them. “Thanks guys. I’m sorry I got us into this.”  
  


* * *

  
And so, an hour and a half later, Shiro found himself in the driver’s seat of their van (the ‘Haunted Odyssey’ as Lance liked to call it), drumming his fingers on the bottle of holy water as he waited for Hunk and Lance to come back from recovery. Every few minutes Hunk would send him a text update of where they were. At first they’d been comforting, stuff like ‘on the second floor now, everythings all good, no sign of spooks’ and ‘Lance is just taking a few daytime photos of the library’. Soon though, after the 6th ‘Lance is taking more photos of the door and the dresser’ it began to grow stale.   
  
He was thankful to know nothing was happening to either of them, although the fact Hunk had decked the two of them out in every last demon repelling item he could think of was probably contributing to that fact. Shiro rolled the bottle of water between his hands some more, studying what - to his own eyes - looked like nothing more than regular bottled water. It could have just been that for all he knew. Maybe the stuff Lance and Hunk had was just regular water too. What if one of those demons attacked them?  
  
No, he breathed. No, he wasn’t going to think about that. He let out a long exhale and picked up his phone in one hand, quickly firing off a message to Hunk.   
  
‘Are you guys going to be much longer? If so I might do a lunch run before I get stir crazy.’  
  
Almost immediately his phone buzzed with another message, this one from Lance.  
  
‘FUCK YEAH LUNCH CAN YOU RUN BY MCDICKS AND GET ME THAT NEW CHICKEN THING’  
  
Shiro suppressed a chuckle and turned the ignition. An errand run would do him good. Sitting here in the van, watching the old house was asking for his imagination to get the better of him. A few times he’d already almost called Hunk and Lance to get them out of there when a cloud cast a shadow over one of the cracking windows. He plunked the water bottle in the cup holder and began to back out of the drive.   
  
“I thought you’d never let go of that thing.”  
  
Shiro nearly gave himself whiplash as the demon’s voice rang out beside him. Thank god he’d had his foot on the brake when he’d appeared, otherwise there was probably a 90% chance they’d be wrapped around a tree about now.   
  
“Holy shit! Don’t do that!”  
  
Keith was sitting cross-legged in the the passenger seat looking at the water bottle with clear distaste. He was dimmer than he’d been last night, his skin had lost the light within it. It was probably just gone with the extended sight he’d granted him. He’d checked this morning in the bathroom, turning out all the lights to see if the room was still visible in soft violet tones, but all he’d seen was the crack of light coming from under the door. At Shiro’s yell Keith looked up at the man.   
  
“Don’t do what? Talk or appear?”  
  
“Just… catch me off guard like that. Especially when driving.”  
  
Keith cocked his horns at that. “Driving… is that what this box is?” Dully Shiro remembered Keith’s mention of centuries from before. He probably had no sense of anything invented in the last 50 years. After letting his heart calm down for what felt like the 50th time in the last 24 hours, he started the car back up.   
  
“This thing we’re in is called a car. Making it move is called driving, and it’s got a lot of rules and needs a lot of focus in order to do it safely. Speaking of, buckle up.” When Keith looked at him blankly he pulled the van over at the side of the road and pointed at Keith’s seatbelt. “That. Put it on. I’ll get in serious trouble if everyone’s not wearing them.”  
  
Keith looked at the strap questioningly before sticking one arm through it and looking back at Shiro expectantly.  
  
“Not… not like that,” he sighed. Before he quite realized it he was reaching over and fixing it for him, carefully showing Keith how the strap was supposed to go around his chest and hips and where it was supposed to clip in at his side. Exactly why he cared about a demon obeying road safety was beyond him. Maybe it made him feel a little more in control of the situation, brought a bit more of regular life into this whole deal. For his own part Keith didn’t fight Shiro on it. Actually, he sat docile, moving as Shiro asked without so much as a peep. It wasn’t until he was properly strapped in that he spoke.  
  
“So these, they’re to restrain humans inside?”  
  
“Kind of,” Shiro replied, starting back down the hill. “If we get in a car accident they keep us from flying out of the car and getting even more hurt.”  
  
“Are we going to?”  
  
“No. It doesn’t happen that often, and I’m a pretty safe driver. But that doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.”  
  
“I could stop that on my own.”  
  
Shiro chanced a glance over to find Keith pouting, pouting. The demon’s brow was wrinkled, cheeks puffed up and bottom lip poking out. It was… actually pretty cute. He slowed down at the sign at the bottom of the lane and merged onto the main road.  
  
“You’re kind of different than I expected.”  
  
“Hmm?” He could see Keith turn to look at him from the corner of his eye.  
  
“Different as in… not like those other demons up at the house. That’s more of what I thought your kind was like. Sort of… hell bent on corrupting and destroying humanity.”  
  
“Oh.” Keith looked away, faking fascination in the trees that passed. Shiro pressed his lips together. He’d hit a sore spot, no doubt, but he hadn’t thought that type of thing would get to a demon. The extended silence was growing stifling. They were sealed together less than a day and he was already straining whatever co-existance they’d started with.   
  
“Not that that’s what you want, of course!” The words tumbled out of him, and once he started a flood surged from his mouth. “I mean… hey, what do I know about demons? Maybe all the movies are wrong, maybe angels are the bad ones, or maybe it’s only like a few bad apples that spoil the bunch. It doesn’t mean that you’re planning to kill me in my sleep or enslave a country. I mean, maybe you just want to be a baker and make bread everyd-”  
  
“You can stop, you know.”  
  
Shiro slammed his jaw shut before he could say anything else stupid. “S-sorry,” he stammered, “I just… I don’t know how to make that sound better.”  
  
“No, I get it.” Keith continued to stare out the front window, one of his legs now propped up on the dashboard.   
  
They continued on in strained silence.  
  
“Is that what humanity thinks of us now?”  
  
“Huh?” Shiro slowed down to look at Keith, but the demon refused to meet him face on. “That we only think of you as evil?” He chewed his lip, trying to pick his words carefully. “I guess, but that might not have always been the case. There’s books and religions and movies that like to portray them that way. Now there are even people you can hire to exorcise demons, not that I know if they’re legit or not.” Keith looked uneasy at that. “Pretty much everything I’ve found leans more on the ‘demons are evil’ side of things, but there might be groups out there that don’t feel that way.”  
  
“They didn’t always use to.” Keith had gone misty eyed.  
  
“They didn’t?”  
  
“No… eons ago we were called on to do things that humans couldn’t. Carve murals, divert rivers, protect kings, almost anything you could imagine, we did it. Some even ended up being lucky enough to be treated like gods.” Keith snorted. “Pretty sure it went to their heads. But slowly we got called on less and less, any respect for us was pretty much gone too. It was ‘do this’ and ‘curse that’, and before you knew it you were only summoned once every half a decade to entertain the masses. You could tell they didn’t even know what they were doing, they were totally sloppy in the art. Some of us got fed up with it.”  
  
“And that’s why those other demons were attacking like that?”  
  
Keith let out an exasperated sigh and rolled his head to look at Shiro. “Would you take kindly to cattle ordering you around as they stuffed their faces with food?”  
  
“N-no,” he shrank into his seat a little. “Is that how you look at us?”  
  
Keith shrugged. “It’s definitely an attitude.”  
  
“No, but I mean you. Is that how you look at me?”  
  
Keith hummed and stuck his other leg up on the dash, reclining back so that his horns grazed the top of the car. Shiro winced, hoping that they wouldn’t carve marks he’d have to explain later.   
  
“I guess I’m still working on my opinion.”  
  
Against his better judgement Shiro pushed further. “But right now? Is it leaning closer to bad?”  
  
He felt his heart skip a beat as Keith looked him over, eyes flicking over to their golden colour and back. He may as well have been naked. At Shiro’s nervousness Keith smiled.  
  
“Well, so far you haven’t been an enormous disappointment like my past few summoners. As for the rest, well, I haven’t wanted to kill you yet.”  
  
Shiro laughed nervously. “I-is that so? I guess that’s good.”  
  
“What about me?”  
  
“What about you?”  
  
The demon leaned over so far that he was on Shiro’s side of the car, two horns swaying dangerously close to his face, the same coy smile on his face. “You asked for my opinion of you, so what’s yours?”  
  
“I- uhm,” Shiro looked at him in disbelief. “I-If I had to say… I guess-” but he cut himself off halfway through, instead locked onto the alarmed face of an elderly lady passing him by in the opposite direction. Her mouth was open in a capital O, eyebrows raised so high they disappeared behind her powdered curls. With a twang in his gut he realized what this must look like to anyone outside the van.   
  
“Uh, so Keith… not that I’m changing the subject or anything, but most humans really aren’t used to seeing demons around. Especially not in a car hurtling down the highway.”  
  
“So?” The demon looked miffed.  
  
“S-so those accidents I mentioned? They might have a higher chance of happening with you sitting here next to me looking like that. Not to mention someone might call about you and…” and what exactly? Run experiments on him? Try to purify Keith and himself? “Let’s just say I wouldn’t end well for either of us, so could you please get back in my hand or el-”  
  
“Or else what?”  
  
“Or else-” But Shiro never finished his sentence. He slammed on the breaks, as slack jawed at the woman they’d just passed.   
  
Keith was gone, or at least the Keith Shiro was used to. In his place sat a regular human, the same shaggy black hair and frame, sitting just like the demon had been a second ago. He was wearing almost the same thing as Shiro: jeans and a hoodie with a leather jacket overtop, except that where Shiro’s sweater was white, Keith’s was red. The only thing letting on to Keith’s otherworldly origins were his eyes, still the same shade of slightly too-vibrant purple to be real.   
  
“Holy shit…” Shiro breathed. “Y-you can do that?”  
  
Keith gave him a look. “I built pyramids and this is what impresses you?”  
  
“N-no… holy shit you did that too?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I guess… I’d just thought you only had the one form.”  
  
“I’m disguised on the first and second plane. No one’s going to notice anything.” Keith was checking over his nails, looking somewhat unsatisfied. With a small flash of light fingerless gloves appeared on his hands. “Much better,” he smiled. “Now, where were you?”  
  
“Uh…” Shiro started driving again, still stunned. It was hard to think straight when being stared at with those eyes. It was like whole galaxies were hidden in there, it was too easy to get lost in them. He looked away from Keith’s expectant face back to the road, fingers gripping the wheel tighter than need be.   
  
“I-I guess… I guess I’m still kind of confused. All my life I grew up thinking demons were evil, and then I started looking for them with friends probably three times as paranoid as me.” Keith made a noise as he glared at the bottle sitting between them. “Then last night I come face to face with some for the first time and most of them tried to kill me. All of them… except you. And then you seem… worried about me. Like genuinely worried. And you’re doing all this nice stuff, and it doesn’t seem like you have other motives for it I can figure out and I’m just… I just don’t know what to think.”  
  
“But right now? Leaning towards good or bad?”  
  
Shiro had to fight down a snort at the demon throwing his own words back at him. “Well, so far you haven’t tried to kill me yet, so that’s definitely a huge plus.” He licked his lips. “I’m glad it was you though. I don’t think I’d enjoy being sealed to one of those other demons.”  
  
He chanced a quick glance at Keith. The other had curled up in his seat, face tucked into the fabric of his hood. He couldn’t be sure, but there might have been a trace of a smile there. Keith’s eyes were mostly hidden, only the barest traces of that same misty look he’d had recalling his glory days. For the first time today, silence was comfortable.   
  
The rest of the drive was a less exciting affair. The main highlight was that part way through Shiro had turned on the radio. Keith had immediately perked up, watching Shiro intensely as he adjusted the dial. As soon as his hand was off the switch Keith’s were on it, surfing stations so fast Shiro could hardly tell when he stopped to listen and when he was scanning. Several minutes and some coaxing from him later, Keith finally decided on one to listen to. When they finally made their way into the drive-thru he was tapping his thumb along to strange new age piece Shiro’d never heard of.   
  
“Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order?”  
  
“Hi, yes!” Shiro rolled down his window and hooked an elbow over the side, but not without a little wave to calm Keith down about the talking box with no aura. “Do you have that new chicken sandwich?”  
  
“Yes sir we do. Would you like that as part of a combo or just the sandwich.”  
  
“Better make it a combo. Also an Angus and a Big Mac combo too. All fries… and uh,” he screwed up his face a second. He always forgot what Lance drank. “Drinks are orange soda, vanilla coke and an iced coffee.”  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
The kid began to rattle the order back to Shiro, the man humming in agreement at each, drumming his hands on the wheel as he waited for her to finish. His eyes swung over in Keith’s direction, then froze.   
  
Keith was… fuzzy? That was the only way to put it really, the demon’s human form looked completely out of focus. He looked at Shiro, perplexed, just as one of his horns flickered in and out of existence.   
  
“KEITH,” he hissed in a sharp whisper, finger now off the wheel and pointed square at the demon. “What’s going on?”   
  
Keith looked down at his hands, first in confusion, then back at Shiro in alarm.   
  
“I’m too low on magic… I can’t hold it properly.”  
  
“Oh fuck,” Shiro swore. “Crap… can we fix it?”  
  
“Sir?” The girl on the headset was trying to get his attention. “Sir is that all?”  
  
“I need more energy, or else I just become dead weight. I won’t even be able to shift back and forth into the seal.” Keith was headed towards panic, babbling at Shiro’s knees. With magic he was well equipped to deal with the world, but without… Shiro had the sudden sense that Keith wasn’t eager to figure it out.  “I need to absorb something… organic sacrifice… blood… tears… a goat…”   
  
“Sir, can you confirm your order please?”  
  
“I… I…. I NEED A TEN PIECE NUGGETS STAT!”  
  
“O-okay…” the girl seemed surprised by his sudden outburst. The steering wheel suddenly got very sweaty under his palms. “And a ten piece McNugget set.”  
  
“Uh… two, thanks.” Keith had leaned over into Shiro’s lap to talk into the box, his face rippling from peach to purple and back. He looked to Shiro for confirmation he’d done right. All Shiro could focus on was the rising heat in his face and that gut dropping sensation associated with tripping over yourself in public.  
  
“Okay, the three sandwich combos and 20 McNuggets. What sauce would you like?”  
  
“S-surprise me…” Shiro croaked.   
  
They crawled up to the next window, painfully slow behind the car in front of them. Keith had decided to tug his hood up onto his face to hide his flickering skin tone. It seemed like he could better hold his appearance if he only focused on one part of it. His whole lower body was back to its usual lithe purple skin. Shiro hoped the drive through staff would just think they were some extremely skintight pants.  
  
Hanging out of the window, eyebrows arched in amusement, was a girl with a headset. Just his luck.   
  
“Got to have your nugs, eh?” she said with a grin. She was clearly enjoying this, especially now that she could see Shiro was a young twenty something trying to fuse himself to his carseat over the whole thing.   
  
“I guess.” His voice was six octaves higher than normal goddammit this is why he hated being put on camera.  
  
“$22.64. I got you one of each.” She watched as a bead of sweat dribbled down Shiro’s forehead as he gaped wordlessly. “Dipping sauces I mean, Nugget Man.”  
  
He was the nugget man. She’d be telling her coworkers about it the moment he left. He wanted to try and clear things up, tell her no, he wasn’t addicted to nuggets he was perfectly normal human being who didn’t try to fight down his chicken urges as his friend in the seat next to him held back laughter (which either Keith was, or he was chanting magic spells). But nope, Keith was about to change back into demon form, which was a whole other can of worms, and anything he said now would no doubt be riddled with enough stuttering and sweating to make him look even more guilty.  
  
He passed over his money with lips pressed shut as if at any moment he was going to let out another shout about nuggets. Wordlessly he collected his food order from her, and booked it out of the lot as fast as the speed limit would allow. Keith bent over, now flickering like an old TV display, and began to root through the bags.   
  
“Which ones are these ‘nuggets’?”  
  
“Boxes,” Shiro said, voice now only half as high as it had been earlier.  
  
Keith sat back with two containers of nuggets and 5 sauce packets, eyeing them cautiously. “All the square packaging are ‘nuggets’ then? They don’t look very organic… are you sure they’re edible?”  
  
“They’re… they’re not ‘organic’ per say, but they’re definitely edible. The boxes are just the packaging. Nuggets are in the bigger boxes.”  
  
Keith settled back into his seat, looking more like a walk of shame back from a halloween party than fully human and cracked open the box. He gave the chicken a questioning sniff and picked up a piece. The golden glaze flickered over his eyes for a second, then returned to normal.   
  
“Is there a reason why you got so stressed back there?”  
  
Shiro glanced over at Keith. He was sitting there, poised to take a bite, but his face was serious, fully focused on Shiro, with only the ghost of a hood remaining to his disguise.  
  
“I… I’ll explain after you get some food in you.”  
  
“You can still talk as I eat though.” Keith popped the chicken morsel in his mouth. The response was instantaneous. The demon’s eyes lit up so much Shiro thought they might be glowing for real, his hair practically curling up in pleasure as he chewed. “Christ this is good,” he moaned. The mirage of his clothing seemed to stabilize, even if his skin and horns remained their otherworldly selves.  
  
“The little packs are dipping sauces if you want to try them.”  
  
“Oh shit.” Keith tore into them eagerly. Between mouthfuls of meat he side eyed the other. “You said you’d talk, so talk. Why did you suddenly get stressed?”  
  
He let out a sad little laugh. “I don’t know… I just… I’ve always hated being put in the spotlight where I can make a fool of myself. It’s fine when its with friends and stuff, that’s different, but when its a stranger seeing me do something weird I get nervous. That’s probably why I like to film for Hunk and Lance instead of being part of the shoots myself. I don’t have to worry about thousands of people watching me fall down a flight of stairs.”  
  
Keith looked at him over his desecration of BBQ sauce. “That happened?”  
  
“Not stairs, but a step, yeah. I didn’t see it and next thing I knew I’d face planted into old carpet. Lance wanted to cut it into the extras but Hunk and I convinced him not to. It’s one thing for that to happen once in your time of knowing someone, but if that’s the only impression of them you’ll ever get…”  
  
“It can paint you in a bad light.”   
  
“Yeah, exactly. Everyone’s more than what your first impression of them is, but that’s still usually what they use to judge you by. I don’t just want to be known as ‘the clumsy one’, or ‘the asian one’, or ‘that weird camera guy who swears he can see ghosts no one else can’. It just really… gets to me when someone doesn’t or can’t see past the things that you aren’t comfortable with yourself.”  
  
“Yeah…” Keith was back to a fully human form now, frame burrowed into the bucket seat, final nugget hovering in front of his face. His brow was furrowed, watching but yet not watching as a rainbow of dipping sauces oozed onto his fingers. Shiro watched as a gob fell onto Keith’s shirt, and suddenly felt a course of warmth for the demon who’d fallen into his life.   
  
“Y’know the one nice part though?”  
  
“Mm?” Keith looked over at him dreamily.   
  
“Spend enough time with anyone and those first impressions can get rewritten for the better.”  
  
Keith blinked back to alertness, looking at him with mute astonishment. Silently the demon turned back around to face the front windscreen, final nugget finally pushed past his lips. They drove on like that for some time, Keith quietly chewing as the radio filled the gap in conversation. He looked down forlornly at the empty box and still open sauce packs and Shiro let out a chuckle.  
  
“Looks like it’s good we got two.”  
  
“That one isn’t for you? I thought the girl said…”  
  
Shiro felt his cheeks grow red again. “I got it for you, ‘cause you said you needed food of some kind.”  
  
“Really?” There was a crinkling of paper as Keith unwrapped the next pack and a fresh wave of deep fried chicken smell wafted throughout the car. “Because I really haven’t replenished in 30 years… I really… really want it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shiro smiled, “really.”


	5. Chapter 5

Shiro’d arrived back at the haunted manor in an unexpectedly cheery mood, treating Keith to a few of his fries and letting the demon have a taste of his coffee as well (Keith far preferred the nuggets to everything else). Lance and Hunk had been standing in the lane, the former tapping his wrist in mock impatience as Shiro hastened to shove the empty chicken boxes under the seat and coax Keith back into hiding. It seemed he’d more or less recovered from his bout of weak magic, but Shiro’d have to ask about that later to know for certain.

Shiro scanned over to his right. Lance was devouring his chicken burger and fries between sips of orange soda, leaving little mayonnaise fingerprints on everything he touched. Every so often he’d grab a fry from the box between them and stuff it in Shiro face. Behind them, in the rearview mirror, he could see Hunk calmly eating his own meal, carefully wiping his fingers between bites while staring down at the recovered camera with a wrinkle in his brow. They’d been on the road for about an hour and a pit stop visit now, mainly talking logistics and reviewing research notes on their next location, an abandoned grain mill. Part of it was Shiro’s new paranoia over another unfriendly demon encounter, and partly wanting to avoid the lines of questioning that would no doubt come up after the others had investigated the scene. 

He started to zone out from Hunk’s mumblings about fixes to the camera mount and Lance’s food-damped responses to the radio DJ’s quiz (“It’s Paul Schaffer you idiot, Paul Schaffer!”), and let his mind wander back to this morning’s ride. So Keith was old, really old, older than the pyramids even. And he’d been summoned multiple times before, not just for hauntings, but for any task under the sun. He’d been a body guard, probably even an assassin, built cities, maybe even gifted other humans powers like he had with himself. It was strange. He’d never stopped to think demons had led lives like that before. It made him think about legends and old rituals lost to time. Did they call on demons back then? Consult with them like old friends? Keith didn’t seem to fit the personality of someone who’d been treated like a servant his whole life. There had to have been people before, people who made him turn out differently from those other demons. 

“Shiro. Earth to Shiro…” A mayo streaked hand waggled in front of his face. “You’re not falling asleep and gonna drive us off the road are you?”

The sounds of the car came rushing back. Radio, Hunk’s tinkering, even the drumming of Lance’s knee against the door. Lance was looking at him, still madly jazz-handing in front of his face as if Shiro’d just slept through his fourth grade recital. On eye contact, he booped a sticky finger on Shiro’s nose. 

“Stay awake big guy. You need the rest of your coffee?”

“Yeah, good idea,” Shiro said. Easier than explaining where his head had been to them. He took a long drag from his straw and checked the GPS. Two more hours to go. 

“Great!” Lance swung one of his mantis-like legs around the cockpit and settled into a sideways sitting position, legs crossed. “If you’re zoning out this much, maybe we can chat about that last site.”

“Why not?” He sighed internally. As much as he didn’t want to relive it, if he got it all out once they could stop asking. “So what did you find when you both went back?”

“Ooo, okay well first off, we scanned the rest of the building, y’know, checking out if there were any other signs of activity, hunting for footprints and that kind of junk. Nothing that exciting, except Hunk did get scared by an old fur coat in a closet.”

“One you wore when you jumped out at me, mind you,” called Hunk from the back.

“Potay-to, potah-to,” Lance shrugged, “I still love ya big guy, it’s just too hard to resist. Anywho, so we finally went back to the room and you’ll never guess what.”

“The room was back to normal?” Shiro braced himself for evidence to make him look even more crazy than he must already seem. 

“No! Dude, far from it, it was wrecked to pieces. Whatever was in there must have been super fucking pissed!”

“That’s… familiar.”

“I know, right? Like, obviously it’s not a good thing that stuff’s all busted now, we’re probably never going to be allowed to go back, but everything’s basically the way it was when we dragged your butt out of there. Door’s still sitting there in the middle of the hall, that cabinet’s still blocking the way in, it’s crazy! Oh! And Hunk! Tell him the best part!”

“The camera wasn’t totally broken.”

“No, not that.”

“I just have to repair the mount and use our warranty to fix the cracked lens, and the footage is totally safe. It could even still film.”

“Hunkkkkk!”

“Okay, okay,” their friend chuckled, taking a long sip from his drink and watching as Lance’s face went from pink to purple trying to hold back excitement. “We checked out the room, and the mess in there, looks like it’s some pretty decent evidence for the supernatural.”

“PROOF OF THE SUPERNATURAL SHIRO! Dude, think about it! We’re gonna be famous, we’re gonna be the guys that proved ghosts are real!”

“Demons Lance, they’re demons, not ghosts, remember?”

“Wh-what kind of evidence?” Shiro asked, subconsciously rubbing the mark around his finger.

“Okay so you know that huge cabinet that almost nailed you?”

Shiro winced. “Yeah?”

“The dust markings on the floor. There’s nothing. Just four little peg marks where the feet stood, no footprints or anything else even close to it. We hadn’t even walked over there in the room. It basically looks like it was up and picked up by something invisible, which it was! Pair that with the spirit box audio and we’re golden! Real ghost hunters know it’s hard to tamper with that shit, especially if we let other people check out the audio file themselves to prove we didn’t change things.” Lance looked like a kid on Christmas. ”Isn’t this great?”

Well, they didn’t think he was crazy. Still, he couldn’t shake the overall uneasy feeling around the whole encounter. “Y-yeah, yeah it is.”

“There’s one little thing though,” Hunk spoke up, and Shiro braced himself. “The video recording was cut off before the whole encounter. Actually…” he could hear Hunk fiddle with the buttons and hit play. His own voice chimed out in the car, tiny from the small camera speakers.

“Oh… oh wow… hey there little guy… *click*”

Lance sucked in a breath, Hunk looking at the tray table laiden with food between him and Shiro, who was now furiously gnawing a hole in his lip as he fought to stay calm. 

“You turned it off?” Lance’s voice was cold.

“Lance, he probably had a reason, maybe he needed to swap batteries…”

“Hunk, there’s nothing on the tape but he definitely said hi to something, and then the next thing we know he’s falling through a door with some demon wailing on him. So why did you turn it off, huh Shiro?”

“I… I…” he started, but there's was no way around this without a mess of trouble. He’d be chewed out one way or another. Turned it off on accident, he’s careless; explain why, he’s the loony who’s been hiding the fact he can see ghosts for years. He could feel his heartbeat quicken, face grow hot, flush creeping down his neck and hands. He could see his finger flash a faint purple, warning, and stuffed it under his leg before Lance can latch onto it as well. He needed to keep Keith out of this.

“I see stuff… sometimes.” It’s a mumble, barely discernible over the radio, but Hunk and Lance both paused. “Things that look like ghosts, even thought you guys never seem to see them too. The camera doesn’t see them either. So… so sometimes I talk to them.”

Silence from the other two. Shiro licked his lips. 

“I didn’t want to make you guys worry, or look crazy, so I’d always shut off my camera and mic before I tried it. It was just a sanity check… make sure I wasn’t going crazy.”

“Shiro…” Hunk was welling with tears in the rearview mirror. Before he knew it he was being squeezed into the back of his seat as Hunk tried to hug him around it. “You should have told us, we’d never tell you you were nuts!”

A good natured punch in the arm followed from Lance. “Even if you are, you’re way too good a worker to let you go. You ever succeed before by the way?”

“Once or twice,” Shiro sniffed. The road was getting a bit blurry. “Never got much more than a name or a place.”

“Goddammit dude, you could have told us which places were real and which were duds ages ago. We could have saved so much time! You gotta try and remember what you asked them this time, maybe it’ll make it easier for us to talk to some the next time we find something.”

“You’re probably right,” Shiro laughed as he fought down tears, relieved that at least this part of him was accepted by them.

* * *

They’d pulled into the new town and managed to find a diner serving slightly more than the usual burgers and fries (Hunk swore if they went to one more place that insisted macaroni was a valid salad he’d break into the kitchen and make one himself). For the rest of the drive he’d been forced to try and repeat everything he’d said that night, retrace all his actions, right up until he’d come crashing through the wall at their feet. It wasn’t fun, but at least he knew they accepted him for it. Hunk had wrapped him in a great big bear hug the moment he’d stepped out of the van, crushing his lungs and whispering it wasn’t his fault and that demon seemed like a dick. Shiro fought down the urge to tell him not all demons. It was better to avoid the topic until he figured out how to tell them about Keith.

Now full of shepards pie and greek salad Shirt was relaxing outside a well-worn cafe nursing a coffee. Lance and Hunk had gone off to hunt for a place to repair their lens, leaving him blissfully on his own for a bit. Shiro took a sip of his latte and scanned up and down the street. A few people making their way down the other side, one car turning at the corner up ahead. He peaked over his shoulder. The coffee shop owner was bent over the counter, scrubbing mugs and wiping spills. It should be safe. 

With one more scan around him Shiro rubbed the mark on his finger. It glowed a dull purple that he took to be Keith listening.

“Coast is clear if you want to. Disguise though.”

In a blink and a wisp of smoke Keith was sitting beside him, human disguise in place and a finger threatening to dip into the foam of his coffee as the demon squinted at the little leaf pattern on top. Shiro chuckled. 

“It’s just milk foam and coffee made to look that way. Try it if you want.”

Keith plucked the cup up with both hands and took a long draught. The response was slow: first curious, then confused, and finally, with eyebrows screwed up and tongue hanging out, he placed it back on the table. 

“It’s… so bitter. Burnt to hell too.”

“Well, yeah. It’s not amazing here, but it’s caffeine.” He took another sip and smiled at Keith’s concerned face. “At this point I just need it to stay human.”

“But… you’re…”

Shiro laughed. “No, no, no… sorry Keith. It’s an expression, my mistake. Basically I wouldn’t be awake now if I didn’t drink it.”

“Oh.” The demon watched him take another sip. “Do you need to feel better rested? I have some spells that might work for that.”

“Mmph!” Shiro almost inhaled his next sip. “T-that’s okay Keith. Sweet of you, but it’s okay. I don’t want you wasting all your energy on me. Speaking of…” he pulled out a takeout container from his bag. “I have some dinner for you if you want.”

If Keith had big ears Shiro swore they’d be perked up right now. The entire bench was shaking from him bobbing up and down in anticipation, hands eagerly stretched out to take the box of styrofoam. He gratefully took the offered fork and dug in. He tried a little of everything from Shiro’s leftovers, but quickly shoved the peas and cucumber to the side to start going to town on the meat and gravy. Shiro settled back in his seat, smiling into his coffee as he watched Keith’s cheeks chipmunk out with mashed potato. 

With each bite Keith seemed to slow, until his chewing crawled to a halt, mouth full, fork half raised. He looked between the food and Shiro, deep in thought, and put the fork down. With a Herculean swallow he spoke. 

“Why are you doing this?”

Shiro blinked. Wasn’t it obvious? “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Why are you feeding me… for no reason? Or is there a reason?” The demon’s eyes narrowed, that familiar golden tint sweeping over them as if Keith could scan his aura for intent. The hairs on his neck stood on end as Keith’s eyes returned to normal, now frowning at the few remnants of potato and peas. “It’s not normal. Humans don’t feed us without motive.”

“Isn’t wanting you to have enough energy enough reason?”

Keith studied him carefully. “You really don’t know, do you? You never studied ancient texts at all.”

“P-probably nothing you’d ever say was legit.” He was running his hand through his hair, staring at Keith’s elbow rather than into those too-deep eyes. “I just thought you needed food or else your magic would run out.”

Keith’s posture softened somewhat. “You really are more clueless than I thought.” One of the peas was chased around the styrofoam by his small (much smaller than Shiro’d first though) finger. A smile crept over his face, that same wistful expression spreading over it like the first rays of dawn. “Guess I should teach you some of it.”

He looked over Shiro’s shoulder and then his own, and having deemed the space safe, conjured a small, albeit fuzzy figure of a demon beside the sugar jar. “Us demons, we live as more or less a vessel for pure energy. In the other realm we can absorb it freely from our surroundings but here,” the minute demon shrunk, “we can’t and slowly loose it over time. The more spells we cast the faster it happens.” With that the tiny demon was barely taller than a stray pea beside it. 

“Summoners eventually learned that if they wanted us to have enough power they’d have to replenish it, whether it was dismissing us back to our realm or giving it to us here. Since no one wanted to risk losing one of us to someone else…” a sheep appeared beside the little demon, quickly disappearing into the smoke of it’s tiny jaws, “… they started offering us sacrifices instead. Sometimes even before we did our tasks, to earn our favour even more.” The demon continued to grow, countless little sheep disappearing into it. 

“Some of them went too far, fed already strong powers to the point of godly strength. Of course the summoners couldn’t contain them.” The smoke demon was now twice the size of Shiro’s coffee mug. He watched as it raised a foot, little wisps of ants appearing beneath it, only to be smushed back into unbeing. “Someone actually managed to take down a whole civilization because of it. As if he needed a bigger head than he already had a that point,” he huffed, and the apparition vanished. “It went out of fashion to give offerings after that pretty fast. It basically reduced to a last resort to extend our lifespan for a few more hours before they dismissed us for good.” Done his tale, Keith leaned on a hand, watching Shirt with an expectant look.

His coffee had gone cold between his fingers, but Shiro couldn’t bring himself to mind. He knew he should be concerned, he was feeding a demon, potentially to the point where it might threaten to kill him, but right now all he could focus on was the question poised on his tongue.

“And what would happen if I didn’t feed you? Let your magic run dry.”

Keith stilled. The hint of a smile that had been on his face before disappeared, wiped completely blank. He looked at Shiro as if he wasn’t really there, that he couldn’t have asked such a thing. His hand fell to his lap, out of sight, and Shirt had no idea if it was clenching in anger or fear, or trembling, or god knew what else. He opened his mouth to apologize, tell Keith he didn’t need to know, but the demon waved him silent with another look. For the first time since meeting him he felt a whisper of the demon’s age, the hint of tired circles under his eyes, the millennia of wisdom inside them. 

“I’d become mortal.” His voice was quiet, barely a whisper, eyes unable to meet Shiro’s. “I’d be nothing better than an animal to humans, paraded around or hunted. Once my power is gone there’s no chance of recovering it.”

Shiro rubbed the sides of his coffee, staring into the milky depths. Something told him this was intimately more than Keith had ever wanted to tell him, a weakness he never wanted to deal with. He knew the secret of how to rid himself of Keith for good, either trap the demon inside him or leave him helpless by the roadside. 

“How much,” he asked slowly, and Keith chanced a glance up at him. “How much do you have left, after all those years trapped in that room?”

Keith’s mouth seemed to have gone dry, the demon threatening to choke as his tongue refused to make a sound. “Most… most is gone. Maybe a fraction, a 20th if lucky…”

Shiro nodded slowly, pushing the takeout tray forwards. “Then you need everything you can get.”

Keith froze in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear me? I could overpower you… I could…”

“I know,” Shiro said, pushing the tray more insistently at him. “But you’re not, are you? You didn’t have to tell me about this, you could have just let me feed you without knowing it was making you stronger and stronger. You chose to tell me about it, just like you chose to show me that black stuff. You didn’t have to but you did.”

The other remained stock still. For all accounts it could have been Shiro who was the demon Keith was seeing for the first time, the way his mouth hung open and eyes refused to blink in shock. 

“I just… if I’m going to be with you for a long time, which I am, I want it to be comfortable for the both of us. That means I feel safe with you and you feel safe with me. So please,” he held the food out to Keith, “please let me look after you this way.”

Keith’s mouth closed slowly, fingers taking the offering from Shiro with a tremor. He picked up the fork and speared a final lump of potato and brought it to his lips. 

“No green stuff.”

“Huh?”

“Green stuff. I don’t like it. Reminds me too much of all those plants and herbs people burn to keep us out. Tastes watery too.”

Shiro laughed, tension broken. Even Keith managed a small smile as he slid the bite into his mouth. “Got it. No salads.” Already he was brainstorming new foods for Keith to try. He bet he’d like pulled pork, heck, he needed to take Keith to a barbecue place. Maybe he’d like pho… or ramen… if the broth was rich enough he was pretty sure he would. He was so wrapped up in thought he hardly heard the familiar voices and shouts, or the footsteps drawing nearer, until they were right behind him and Lance’s all to teasing voice snapped him out of his reprise.

“Shiro! There you are! Who’s this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really enjoying this AU, but for Min I don't want to perpetually keep extending their gift fic on and on and never officially finish it, so I'm planning to wrap this story on the next chapter and work more in this universe in the future through a series of fics. Hopefully will manage to finish the final chapter tomorrow when I'm on the train c: Happy new years guys!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter here we go! Once more thank you such much Min for the lovely prompts that led into this <3 This is by no means the last thing I intend to write for this AU, but I want to have a nice self contained story in a much larger one that's complete by the end of the gifting period. And lastly, thank you to everyone else reading along! It means a lot that you enjoy it (and Keith's love of nugs) <3

Shiro had completely frozen as the thin man behind him clapped a hand to his shoulder and given it a hearty shake, staring into the beyond like an adulterer being caught by his wife. His friend beside him gave a good hearted wave and stuck his arm out in Keith’s direction, hand outstretched as if waiting for something. All three sets of human eyes were fixed on him. 

“Hi! I’m Hunk. This is Lance.” He jerked a thumb at the thin man. Names Keith recognized. Shiro’s partners, the ones who shared rooms and cars with him and also looked for ghosts, albeit blindly, unlike Shiro. Tentatively he extended his own hand to meet Hunk’s only for it to be crushed in a near-inhuman grip as the man pumped it up and up enthusiastically. 

They looked… different. His view of the world from when he lay dormant in the seal was distorted, like the inside of a fishbowl or lens. The one called Hunk had always been smeared, spread out like a copper pine tree, whereas the Lance looked more like his namesake, head pinched to the size of a pin whenever he had a line of sight to him. Now he could tell Hunk was built like a bear, a big hulking man like the well kept bodyguards or warriors of age. Lance still appeared as more or less a twig, though his head did meet more human proportions now. Shiro was still… Shiro. Black hair with a few streaks of white in his bangs, long eyes now bugging out at him begging to pay attention. 

Right. Humans liked introductions. 

“Keith,” he said with a curt nod. Satisfied, Hunk released his hand, now joining Lance in clasping Shiro’s frame and rocking the still disbelieving man side to side.

“Keith, nice name. So how do you know our Shiro here? Just meet? Long lost twins?”

“Hunk if Shiro had a twin he’d be 6 feet and be cast on Baywatch by now. This is clearly his little brother.” Lance gave Keith a once over. “Twinky younger brother.”

“Ahaha… yeah…” Shiro peeled their arms off of him, giving Keith a sheepish look. “Very funny guys, he’s not by brother.”

“Could have fooled me,” said Lance with an eyebrow dance that could have been mistaken for caterpillar mating. “So you picked him up over coffee, you saucy minx.”

Shiro’d gone red in the face, lips pressed tight, willing himself to disappear into the bench. “N-no… I…” his eyes flicked up to meet Keith’s begging him to go along with his next move. “We know each. Met a long time ago and just ran into each other.”

“Dude!” Lance punched his arm. “No way! So how did you guys meet?”

“Uh… college. Same dorm. Used to hang out a lot and then I graduated and moved out of state.” Keith watched as an errant drop of sweat made its way down Shiro’s neck. He really didn’t like getting put on the spot at all. “We uh… played together in intramurals.”

“Seriously?” Lance glanced over at him. “What sport?”

Crap. What activities did humans do. 

“Wrestling.” That had to still be in fashion.

Lance’s eyes bugged out. “For reals? Did you guys wrestle each other?”

Shiro still looked nervous. Keith gave a relaxed shrug, trying to calm his human down. “Sure. Its a bonding experience, helping the other athletes oil up and clean up afterwards.”

“Oh my god…” Lance let out a noise like a deflating bladder, face contorted into a jester’s grin. “Wait… you oiled Shiro up and wrestled around with him on a mat? Was he shirtless?”

“You’re supposed to be, clothes only prohib-”

“IT WAS JUST A REALLY LOW CUT TOP.” Shiro’s ears had turned a lovely shade of red that even put the tips of his horns to shame. “That’s not important Lance. I just reconnected with him don’t make him think all my friends are weird.”

“Are they supposed to be?” Keith blinked at Shiro.

“N-n-no…” mumbled Shiro, ears still steadily deepening in shade. Lance leaned over Shiro’s shoulder to bring his lips to Keith’s ear.

“If you have any photos of oiled up Shiro hit me up, I won’t tell.”

Keith pulled a face and shoved the man out of his space. He definitely didn’t have photos and certainly wasn’t about to share them with a friend of Shiro’s that seemed to spend half of his time making jokes. Human friendships were strange these days. 

“Soooo,” Shiro dragged out the word, looking to Hunk in desperation, “did you guys manage to find a fix for the camera?”

“Pretty much! The guy at the store offered to rent us a lens while we’re here and send ours in for repairs. Here, I’ll let you take a look, it’ll be you who’s using it the most.” The strangest black box was extracted from the bag hanging over his shoulder and passed to Shiro. “The one crux is that we had to put the full price of the lens on the credit card, in case we bust it or take a run for it. Lance wasn’t happy with that, but then again, he was the one who told the guy we’d broken ours ‘stalking around the house secret-agent-like’.” 

Both Shiro and Hunk raised eyebrows at that, Shiro letting out a low sigh.

“Y’know, you don’t have to try and make all our stories sound fantastic.”

“But I mean it’s true!” Lance sputtered. “Creeping around a house ghost hunting is basically the same thing as being a super spy trying to spot our targets! I mean, come on, is the dude really gonna want to hear another ‘Ohhhh, I don’t know what happened, it must have fallen when I wasn’t there’ BS ones? C’mon Keith, back me up!”

“I…” he was taken off guard, still trying to figure out the box and can combination Shiro was now fiddling with, holding up to his eye and toying with the back side of it. “Didn’t it get broken when people were throwing things around? There was no sneaking involved at all.”

Lance’s face fell in synch to the peals of laughter rolling from Hunk. “Oh god man… he’s got you. Nothing’s getting past him. Dang, if only everyone caught on to your cracks this fast.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “Man… I haven’t managed to shut you down like that in months, Shiro’s never even come close.”

“Hey,” Shiro whined, “yes I have.”

“Nose picking Shiro. The nose picking thing happened this morning.”

Keith was pretty sure he saw Shiro mouth the word ‘crap’.

“Anywhozles,” Lance said with a voice of finality, “since we’re on borrowed time and all now renting a lens for this location, we figured we’d bump the location scout up to tonight and then do the full shoot tomorrow. Otherwise we’re out a whole extra $100.”

“You’re kidding.” Shiro set the box down, the can-like portion somehow extended out like a giraffe’s neck. He reached over, trying to work out how Shiro’d managed to stretch the tough material with his limited human strength. “A whole extra hundred for just another day?”

“He’s counting by 24 hour roll-overs starting tonight. An extra night of shooting means he’s counting it as an extra day, even if we return it just 6 hours in.”

“Crap…” Shiro plucked the tool back off the table, twisting its neck and retracting it to initial size. Before Keith’s very eyes he severed it with one more clean twist and handed the two halves back to Hunk. “Looks like it’s going to be another long day.”

“Yep, which unfortunately means we’ll be stealing you from Keith now.” The twiggy human shrugged and started hassling Shiro up from the table. “Sorry dude, duty calls!”

“It was nice to meet you,” Hunk said with a genuine smile. “If you’re living here maybe we could meet up with you again in the next few days, let you and Shiro reconnect more.”

“Bye Keith! Don’t forget what I said about Shiro!” Lance was all but dragging a bewildered Shiro down the street like a mother with her child, his human staring back at him with a mix of confusion and panic. Like his usual Shiro seemed to be trying to figure out his words and make sense of this sudden turn. On the positive neither of Shiro’s partners had detected anything the matter with him, which spoke volumes for his mirage. On the other hand…

Keith felt a jolt at his navel, right at the centre of his being, pulling him into the table and pressing it’s hard wood into his gut. Shiro jerked too, at the same time, his arm swinging back behind him as if caught in someone else’s wrist. 

The astral cord. The limit was too small. 

Normally, if he’d been fully himself, had all his energy, Keith would have been able to set any distance to the seal he’d placed on Shiro, miles, leagues even if he’d wanted. Instead he’d been so low on magic he was barely above an imp or, god forbid, one of those mushroom-minded will-o-wisps when he’d made it the cord didn’t even stretch halfway down the block. He couldn’t even make it out of their human line of sight long enough to make his way back into the security of the seal. 

The mark on Shiro gave an angry flash of red, protesting the attempt at severing them, and Keith felt a sear of pain strike through his aura. This was not good. In his weakened state there was no good way to get around this. Feeding more energy into the preexisting seal would only deplete his dangerously low energy further, and any attempt to conceal and make his way close enough were sure to be sighted by Lance and Hunk continually glancing behind them as Shiro tried to slow, frightened face looking between his hand and Keith. He’d likely be outed one way or another.

“Wait!” Shiro yelled, and Keith felt the force tugging at him lessen if only by the smallest amount as Shiro took a step back towards him. His human looked between the other two, pleading in his eyes and voice. “Please… I just found him. Can… Keith… do you want to come with us?”

An out. Shiro was saving him, or maybe just his own skin by association, but Keith couldn’t care about the details right now. He slid out from the table, stomach smarting from the stretch on hisself, and made his way over as fast as he dared, until the throb on his essence was nothing but a dull ache and the angry light had faded from Shiro.

Jaw set, he nodded. 

“Well,” Lance sighed, “I call shotgun.”

* * *

The location, he learned, was a rusted industrial building at the riverside, great towering silos and cranes continuing their tumble into further disrepair. He could count more than 7 stories of crumbling wood and stone, slowly being over taken with brambles and the odd bat. A faded, peeling sign reading ‘CONDEMNED’ hung from one corner on the chain fence they’d all stepped through. All in all, unpleasant to the average human but no real significance to any spirit. 

He’d spent the drive pressed up against a window in the back seat of the car - or perhaps ‘van’ was the better word? The three humans seemed to alternate every other time they spoke about it - in avoidance of the several bottles of salt, holy water, sage, and bogus to semi-bogus talismans Hunk was clutching beside him. Lance had mentioned, somewhat apologetically, that Hunk was the most paranoid of the three of them. It was understandable given Shiro’s last encounter with some of the more… unsavoury members of his kind, but he still found it excessive. If anyone should have been paranoid it was Lance, the weakest looking of the bunch and likely the most weak willed, easily toyed with and used by any demon worth their salt looking for a pliable mind. But instead it was the strongest of the three who even now, standing right outside the building he’d insisted they needed to visit tonight, was throwing salt over his shoulders and chanting. 

“Sorry about the ride up.” In his absentminded state Shiro had made his way to Keith’s side, one of his hands coming to rest on Keith’s shoulder, the gesture making him jump somewhat. “I didn’t realize Hunk had unpacked so much of his stuff after we’d gotten in. You okay?”

“Fine.” He shrugged the arm off. “Most of that stuff only works on contact, and the ones that would work for him at a distance are all wrong.”

“Really?” Shiro craned his neck to get a better look at the wares that littered Hunk’s bag and jacket. “Like what?”

“Imperfect circles, lines not fully completed, wrong transcriptions…” he stopped. There was no benefit to him in going further. “There’s something off with all of them that either makes them weak or completely harmless.”

“Well, don’t tell Hunk. He’ll be on-edge enough as it is. We’ll just let him believe they all do what he wants them to do. Makes it easier to keep you hidden too. Speaking of,” Shiro scanned him up and down, “how’s your magic supply doing? How long do you think you can keep the disguise up for, safely?”

Keith set his jaw. He was certainly better than he had been this morning, but he was a long way from truly being himself. “Two hours. Maybe three tops before it gets to like what it was earlier.”

Shiro sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. “Great. We’ll have to work with that. Just great,” he muttered, and strode into the building behind the other two. 

Between the three of them there were nearly a dozen cubes and broaches of varying sizes, all giving off the mildly irritating buzz of electricity. He could spot the ‘camera’ that Shiro had been looking over now fastened into his belt, along with the so called ‘SpiritBox’, but the remaining articles has him stumped. Both Hunk and Lance had tiny boxes fastened to their chests along with little snakes of wire with foam heads, along with an assortment of light sources, other boxes, and a tacky coloured rifle he’d seen Hunk filling with holy water before entering. 

“What are those?” he asked, pointing at Hunk’s chest. 

“Oh, woah, I guess you haven’t seen a GoPro before then, have you? They’re just super tiny cameras you can strap on pretty much anywhere. Resilient too. Waterproof, dustproof, dropproof, the works! The one issue is they don’t come with screens but it’s not too bad we can just look at the image on our phones.” He held up another brick that definitely didn’t look like any phone he’d seen before and showed Keith the image on it. It could have been a mirror for all he knew, because staring back at him was a miniature doppelgänger of his mirage, body moving with a slight delay compared to his own. 

“And that?” he pointed to the snake.

“It’s a microphone.” Hunk’s brow furrowed. “Wow man, you’re really not familiar with any of this at all.”

A burly arm wrapped around his shoulders and tugged him into it's chest. “Keith kind of likes to resist technology. Kind of an old soul like that. Doesn’t even have Facebook, which makes him kinda hard to look up.” There was tension in Shiro’s neck, some defensiveness in his words despite the smile he wore on his face. “It’s all common knowledge to us, but do you remember when we had to explain to Lance’s aunt ‘what a YouTube is’?”

“And it took a half hour? Yeah, vividly. That woman still tries faxing him instead of email.”

“Don’t shit on Auntie Debb,” Lance warned from his vantage point at the top of a staircase. “The woman might not know the difference between Internet Explorer and a halfway decent browser but she makes a mean pie. Hundred layers of flakey.”

“Oh mannn…” there was a far away off look in Hunk’s eyes now. “You think she’d ever give up the recipe to me? Her butter tarts are still the best thing in the world.”

Lance snorted. “Unless you marry me or one of my cousins probably not.”

“Might be worth marrying you just for that.”

“Guys,” Shiro sighed. “We all like pie, but we’ve got a job to do here. Can we just get this done and go home to bed?”

“Sure, sure,” Lance replied, and started leading the way down the hall, one of his many lighting devices swinging from side to side. “But know that if Hunk and I do get married, there’s no pie in it for you.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “I think I’ll live. Now, let’s finish scouting this place already.”

As it turned out, the meaning of scouting still hadn’t changed much over the years. Shiro and the others apparently always did a quick look over of any place they were set to explore before going back in depth. It helped to focus where they’d spend the bulk of their time and confirm or debunk any stories about the place before they could waste precious resources on things. Hunk and Shiro had been quite happy to explain their entire process to him between quips from Lance, and before he knew it he was enjoying himself as he watched them peek fruitlessly into room after room searching for spirits of any kind. 

He’d already scanned the building at length to the extent of his current abilities, and just like he’d thought, there was little of interest. Aside from the auras of the mice and bats that infested this now abandoned mill, he could only sense two other existences around, neither anything that he’d expect any of them to be excited about. One ghost of an old man and a wisp, a strong memory no doubt left behind by some past worker here. He rolled his eyes as Lance rattled off tale after tale of locals coming here and hearing footsteps and knocking and seeing dark shadows from the corners of their eyes. It was practically pure hogwash, but the old man’s spirit several floors above them had him hold his tongue. At least they weren’t completely wrong about this place. It was haunted, just not in the way they seemed to hope. 

Shiro had pulled him aside shortly after they’d started, the strength of his grip surprising Keith with how aggressively he was pulled in to listen. 

“Don’t ask Hunk about electronics again.”

His eyed had narrowed. “Why not?”

“He thinks one of the best tests for demon possession is to ask them how computers work.”

“What’s a-”

Shiro had waved a hand, silencing him. “Not important right now, I’ll explain to you when alone. Just… don’t do it. If you go much further than you already have he’s bound to catch on that something’s up.”’

So instead he’d been amassing a mental tally of all the things he needed to ask Shiro, starting from what a computer was right down to what had happened to phones in the past hundred years. It a lot of ways it kept him from being bored from the constant search for nothing. He had half a mind to gift sight back onto Shiro, or maybe even one of his friends to give them a scare, but as he felt his energy reserves dwindle that idea got pushed aside. He had to hold out until the end of this. 

“Can we please pick up some of those nuggets on the way back,” he asked as they made their way through floor number six, the ghost of the old man watching them with interest as the humans walked by without a second glance. He seemed docile enough, likely a worker who’d bit the dust here and now spent his days watching other humans meander around the place without a clue. Even Shiro looked him over as little more than his exhaustion kicking in. He’d have to try and fix those eyes of his for good, with his vision on the second plane as bad as it was the man may as well have been blind. 

“Duuuude! Keith wants to do a McDicks run, I’m down! You think this town will make apple pie McFlurries?”

“We can try, after,” Hunk said with a sigh. “Just one more floor and we’re done.”

“Did you find anything you can use?” Keith asked, partly out of politeness, and partly because he wanted to see what Hunk and Lance deemed ‘quality leads’.

Lance wiped his brow and surveyed the open workroom they’d found themselves in. “Well, we’re going to have to shoot on the first floor regardless cause that’s the entrance, and the basement is basically a must even though you can barely make it three steps in there without needing to turn around. Second and fourth floors are a bust for anything even remotely interesting, three looked promising with those old offices overlooking the workflow and that grain chute, and five we might be able to find something better on a longer comb through. Here though, there’s not much, not even really any reported sightings up here, except…” he stopped, casually raised finger pointing to the wall where the moon shone through broken window panes. 

“There. That looks like a mess of work bags and knickknacks and carvings.”

Keith let out a low whistle. Lance… Lance had actually guessed the location of the wisp, all on speculation alone. It shone a faint copper above where it was no doubt tethered to something in the piles of debris or carvings of love declarations. It may not have been from back when the mill was working, but there was no doubt that there was something there. 

“Shiro, can we get a closer look with the good camera, get some footage to review and try to look up anything in there tomorrow before we come back?”

“Sure,” he said, hefting the large camera in his hands. “I’m going to need some light though. Someone help me?”

Wordlessly Keith took a lamp from Hunk and followed behind Shiro, casting sharp light and sharper shadows over the scene. If they could make it close enough he might be able to enhance Shiro’s sight for a second, just long enough to help him pick out the wisp and see there was actually something there. Shiro’d crouched down, scanning the debris at their feet and carefully stepping closer to where the wisp lay, blinking dully like a listless firefly. Keith prepared the spell, trying to stifle the words on his lips the second they left his tongue lest the others overhear him. 

He never got the chance to cast it. 

There was a creak of worn wood past it’s limits and the snap and crumble of rotting lumber beneath their feet. Shiro reacted in slow motion, arms lowering the camera first in consideration, then his eyes flying wide as his two legs disappeared into the non-existent floor below him, and finally a scream only leaving him as his chest disappeared into the hole along with Keith. He watched in shock as Shiro’s hands instinctually threw the camera from their grip and tried in vain to catch the edge of the gap but close on nothing. He could see the dark floor of the ground below them rushing forwards, hear the screams from Hunk and Lance above where they dared not step further, feel the terror and fear rushing through Shiro’s veins. 

He did the only thing he could. 

Shiro was tugged into his chest, face buried into the now dissolving shirt of his disguise as Keith let his true form bleed through, horns and tail and all. There was no time to sprout wings, not enough energy to transport them elsewhere. All he could do was cast a shield around them and hope his body could take the rest of the force. The floor beneath them cracked with a sickening crunch, splitting open as it slowed their fall and dropped them below, further into the bowels of the building. Shiro had gone limp in his grasp, voice lost in the sounds of splintering wood and groaning nails. Keith felt the impact wrack his essence, choke the wind out of him as they fell to the floor below. He felt it leave his lungs completely as he crashed into the boards and plaster that had made it down before him, the entire building screaming as it fought to hold their weight another time. He could feel the wood strain, the lumber pushed to it’s very limits, his shield flickering as he fought to hold it for another descent. 

But they did not fall. 

More debris rained down on them but the floor held, whether miracle of the padding of floors before it or something else they came to a halt with a sickening impact. His physical body was battered and bruised, energy dangerously low, but even so he could only remain focused on Shiro. The breathing was shallow, form unmoving, but the heart was battering away inside alive. They were both alive. Keith finally let himself take a breath of his own. 

He could feel hands slowly trace up his shoulders, fingers touch his battered face and matted hair up into his horns. Up above he could hear the faint cries of Lance and Hunk and the distant clap of their footsteps as they raced their way to find them. They were going to get their wish after all, they were going to find something exciting fourth floor, the complete opposite of Lance’s intuition. He cracked a smile at that. 

“Idiot…” Shiro’s voice was even quieter than his own breathing, shaky and wet. “You idiot… why did you… why did you do that they’re going to find out about you, you’re going to be out of magic…” A fist hammered down on Keith’s chest, the blow weak enough to have been a child’s. “What were you thinking?”

“Y-you…” he tried, but Shiro shut him off.

“You just told me how dangerous it is for you to run out of it and now you’re… you’re…” He felt the grip on his horn tighten. 

“But you’re alive…”

“That’s…” Shiro swallowed, face still obscured in Keith’s chest, “that’s besides the point. If I die you go back to… to your world and you get all your energy back. You heal. There’s nothing in it for you if I live.”

Keith fisted the back of Shiro’s jacket in his palm. “I get to explore Earth though. That’s something.” He held himself back from the next words on his tongue. 

Shiro continued to breathe into his chest, great gulps of air slowing. It felt like an eternity from when his breathing finally slowed and his chin lifted to look at Keith. “Is that really enough? You can’t even go ten feet from me without that… that weird thing happening and now you’re… you’re…” Shiro trailed off, eyes blinking back water. “How much do you have left?”

Keith froze. “What do you-”

“What do you think? Magic. How much do you have left? How do I fix it?” Shiro was looking around frantically now, as if food or drink would surface from midair. “There has to be something here, there’s got to be!”

“Why…” he croaked, and Shiro slowed. “Why are you like this?”

“‘Like what?”

“You… you don’t make sense. You’re not a summoner but you can see spirits, you’re not scared of me, or asking for gifts or curses like a pleb in the forum. You feed me, and protect me, and worry about me but you don’t use me like an investment that can die or be stolen like others. You… you just… are! And it doesn’t make any sense, why are you like this to me?”

“I…” Shiro stilled, still looking at him in uncertain bewilderment. “… but you don’t make sense… I always thought… and then you’re not…” He shook his head, teeth gritted. “You’re distracting me, please Keith, we don’t have much time, just tell me how I can help you.”

“There! Like that!” He licked his lips. “Why do you care about me?”

Shiro stared at him in shock. “Why do you care about me?”

The words faltered on his lips, trapped microns from being. He was just… he couldn’t say it. Millenia had gone by where he could say anything, do anything, and now he couldn’t even string three words together. Shiro watched him, Keith could swear he was analyzing every inch of him, looking for any tell-tale sign or half uttered word. The man on top of him sighed. 

“If we’re both asking that, you can let me save you. Just tell me what I can do. You said there were live sacrifices before, goats, blood…”

The two of them both looked at the gash on Shiro’s arm, a cut straight through his coat from a wayward nail that had made it through the shield. 

“I’m bleeding.”

“Shiro, don’t.”

“Why not?” He was trying to rip his sleeve further, open access to the wound and offer it to him. “You’re almost out of magic Keith, you don’t have to tell me that for me to figure it out. It’s just a little bit, you’re not going to kill me.”

“I… the seal,” he groaned. “It’s a blood seal. The more you give to me, the more it grows, the more the link grows.”

“So?” Shiro was trying harder now, pressing his arm up against Keith’s lips. “I thought you already told me, you’re with me until I’m dead Keith. That’s a pretty strong link already, don’t you think?”

“You can’t remove it as easily…”

“That’s fine,” Shiro clipped, “I don't know if I want to anyway. You and me, until death do us part. That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

“Are you…”

“Yes,” Shiro softened, “I’m sure. Don’t go out on me so easily.” He pressed his arm back against Keith’s lips. “Now stop trying to die on me. I know it’s no chicken or anything, but…” he stopped, cut short as Keith kissed the mark.

He could feel the tingle on his skin as Shiro’s lifeblood passed into him, warm and comforting, full of life. Healthy, Shiro was healthy, heavily bruised yes, but no lasting scars. Heat flooded back into his cheeks, strength back into his bones. Just enough to recover, just enough to last the next few days without worry, he owed it to the both of them. From then on he’d take other offerings from Shiro, food and the likes. He wanted to try more with this human, see more and do more with him, show him as much of his world as Shiro could show him of this newer Earth. He might be able to teach him spells, just like Shiro might be able to explain what an ‘App-Store’ was.

Keith pulled back, recharged. With a swipe of a finger, before the other could protest, he closed up the cut, leaving it as smooth and unmarked as before. Shiro looked at him in bewilderment, letting out a laugh as Keith pulled his illusion back on around him to the nearing sounds of Hunk and Lance’s footsteps. 

“You’re going to need to look a bit more beaten up than that if we just fell through two stories. Here, add a few cuts and bruises here,” he touched Keith’s arm, “and here,” his shoulder, “and here…” his fingers coming to rest on Keith’s cheek, a bright gash forming where they sat. He slowed, gazing into Keith’s eyes with eyes… eyes like storm clouds. Deepest grey to halos of white, almost like streaks of lightning… or no… sunlight. Sunlight peaking through the clouds, the first signal of clearer skies to come.


End file.
